THE SNAPSHOT THEORY
Many writers have heard Ernest Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory” of writing from Death in the Afternoon. It goes like this:
If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.
Hemingway’s sentiment makes a good deal of sense: You can’t include everything your reader might want to know in the story. There just isn’t enough room – and, worse, you then leave the reader with no work to do on their part, nothing to infer. And readers to infer; they like to participate in the story. If you, the writer, know the details that aren’t explicitly stated, you let readers read into things – and that’s what
