One True Sentence by Paul B. Cohen

On Twitter recently, I read this piece of advice: “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know – Ernest Hemingway.”

One true sentence. Sounds wonderful. Even so, I wondered what a true sentence might be, and whether that really was all you had to do. It would be easy to assume that Hemingway was exaggerating here. After all, short stories and novels aren’t made up of only one sentence, unless they are the briefest of flash fictions. Stories, and indeed prose in general, are composites of many sentences—the linking of clauses, phrases, telling images and dialogue. These components form the building blocks of narrative.

Hemingway’s observation was not offered as a standalone commandment. In fact, it was at the core of a passage from A Moveable Feast, the writer’s posthumously published memoir of his years in Paris. It runs like this: “Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

It is known that Hemingway intensely worked his sentences, refining his style and paring his words. Indeed, as the passage continues, he describes battling against writing “elaborately,” and how he would throw away “ornament” to “start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.”

This takes us closer to what Hemingway meant. Even so, what would constitute a true sentence? Perhaps Hemingway is telling us we need arresting openings that snare the reader. Certainly, in A Farewell To Arms, Hemingway pulls us into the narrative with this masterful sentence: “In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.” There is a muscular rhythm at work here, as well as a withholding of “adornment.” He uses only one adjective, “late,” and sews into his sentence a string of nouns: “summer,” “year,” “house,” “village,” “river,” “plain” and “mountains.” These anchor us to a different place and time.

Is his opening, then, a true sentence? It’s an alluring one, for sure, but for me, the question remains: How do I take Hemingway’s advice and apply it to my fiction?

I think the answer is that as a writer, the quality of being “true” is about conveying authenticity. I must win the reader’s trust that my fiction is “true” in its essence, whether the story is set in London or Hong Kong, whether it takes place in 2018 or 1777, on a planet in a distant galaxy, or in my backyard. To do that, I must stitch plot, character, and setting into a narrative that moves the reader to feel that she or he is tasting a drop of truth, being seduced by genuine emotions, and becoming engaged with the characters.

If I can do that, then perhaps I will be fit to sit with Hemingway and drink a pastis with him at the Cafe Rotonde in Paris, toasting the miracle of one true sentence following another.

Toasting—in short—the inestimable value of being authentic in one’s writing.

Paul B. Cohen read English at Leeds University, and holds graduate degrees from Vanderbilt University and the University of Southern California where he studied for a master’s in creative writing. Formerly a freelance theatre and film reviewer, his plays have been seen in various cities in the United States. His short stories have appeared in a number of journals, including Prole, Conclave, Spelk and Gold Dust. Paul’s tale Lecha Dodi was a first place winner in Moment magazine’s Short Fiction Awards, judged by novelist Alice Hoffman, and he is currently writing novels. Find out more about Paul on his website: www.paulbcohen.com/ or via his Twitter account: @paulbcohen1.

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