Using your white space as a writer

What’s good, family? I hope everybody is doing well and thriving and all that.

Today, I want to talk about how white space works in a writing and how authors can use it. For those unsure what I mean, I’m referring the space on the page where words don’t appear. 

Ernest Hemingway is rumored to have once had a contest with his friends at a bar (all his stories take place at a bar) where they were trying to write the shortest short story. 

Hemingway is rumored to written, “For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.” Just sit with that one for a second. 

I personally find that brilliant, no matter who wrote it. 

And the brilliance, to me, is that 99% of this story takes place in the white space. Most of this story is not about what he wrote, but what he DIDN’T write. That gives the reader the ability to put the together by themselves with just a little direction from the author. I’m pretty sure all you who read that line pictured how you thought the story played out too. That makes you feel a part of the story and hooks you into it so much more. 

And that’s the kind of thing I think more authors need to know about and play with.

For example, if you end a scene with a character going to bed, you don’t have to start the next scene with that character waking up, brushing their teeth, eating breakfast, etc. You don’t even have to say they slept because we assume that’s what they did because that’s where you led us. 

You don’t have to start the next scene in the next morning. You don’t even have to start the next scene in the same place. 

So, let’s say you end a scene with a character going to bed. You can have two extra lines of white space before the next scene and put that character anywhere. The next scene could have that character inside a robbery at a grocery store. 

If you do that, we have to imagine on our own how the character got their and what happened in between. 

All of that is to say that you don’t write everything a character does, so you can use what you don’t show to help move the story. 

That’s telling you to work in ambiguity when you can. Ambiguity in certain areas leaves a story in the grey area and asks your reader to make connections that you don’t directly make for them. 

So, think back to that Hemingway story. How can you selectively leave out certain elements of your story that will let the reader do more work for you and be more engaged in your story. 

Be the chess master. Move your pieces around and hide some of them to create the best strategy for getting your reader to be involved in your story. 

Happy writing, y’all.