How Does Hemingway’s Dialogue in Hills Like White Elephants Compare to Modern Screenplay Writing?
Author: Martin Munyao Muinde
Email: Ephantusmartin@gmail.com
Direct Answer
Ernest Hemingway’s dialogue technique in “Hills Like White Elephants” shares remarkable similarities with modern screenplay writing, particularly in its emphasis on subtext, minimalism, and “show don’t tell” principles, yet differs significantly in its literary context and purposeful ambiguity. Both Hemingway’s prose dialogue and contemporary screenwriting prioritize realistic speech patterns, economical language, and indirect revelation of character psychology through conversation rather than exposition. However, Hemingway’s dialogue operates within a purely textual medium where readers control pacing and must imagine vocal delivery, while screenplay dialogue is written specifically for actors to perform with visual and auditory dimensions that clarify or complicate meaning. Modern screenwriters often provide more explicit stage directions, action lines, and character descriptions than Hemingway’s sparse narrative style permits, though the best contemporary dialogue writers embrace Hemingway’s principle that what characters don’t say matters as much as what they do say. The key distinction lies in intentionality: Hemingway crafted dialogue to maintain literary ambiguity and reader engagement, whereas screenplay dialogue must balance ambiguity with the practical demands of visual storytelling, actor performance, and audience comprehension in a passive viewing experience.
What Are the Fundamental Characteristics of Hemingway’s Dialogue Technique?
Ernest Hemingway’s dialogue technique, exemplified perfectly in “Hills Like White Elephants” published in 1927, represents a revolutionary departure from nineteenth-century literary conventions that favored elaborate description and authorial commentary. Hemingway strips away narrative intrusion and psychological exposition, allowing characters to reveal themselves almost entirely through spoken words and minimal action descriptions. His dialogue embodies the “iceberg theory” or “theory of omission,” where the visible surface conversation conceals vast depths of unspoken emotion, conflict, and meaning that readers must actively infer (Hemingway, 1932). In “Hills Like White Elephants,” the central subject—abortion—never appears explicitly in the dialogue, yet permeates every exchange between the American man and Jig as they negotiate this life-altering decision through indirect references to “the operation” and “letting the air in” (Hemingway, 1927). This technique demands reader participation and interpretation, transforming reading from passive consumption to active meaning-making. Hemingway’s characters speak in fragmented, repetitive, and often evasive language that mirrors authentic human conversation, particularly during moments of emotional difficulty when people struggle to articulate genuine feelings or deliberately avoid painful truths.
The structural characteristics of Hemingway’s dialogue include radical compression, strategic repetition, and the absence of elaborate dialogue tags beyond simple “he said” and “she said” constructions. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” entire paragraphs consist solely of dialogue with minimal attribution, creating rhythmic patterns that emphasize the circularity of the couple’s conversation as they return repeatedly to the same points without resolution. Hemingway employs what linguists term “cooperative principle violations,” where characters seemingly respond to each other but actually talk past one another, their surface agreement masking fundamental disagreement (Nolan, 1999). The American repeatedly assures Jig that “I don’t want you to do it if you don’t want to,” while simultaneously pressuring her toward his preferred outcome, creating dramatic irony as readers recognize the manipulation beneath his reasonable tone. Jig’s responses become increasingly terse and ambiguous: “I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me” could express genuine selflessness, bitter resignation, or strategic manipulation depending on interpretation (Hemingway, 1927). This multiplicity of possible meanings within simple statements exemplifies Hemingway’s mastery of subtext. His dialogue also incorporates pauses and silences, indicated through descriptions like “The girl did not say anything” or “The American looked at the bead curtain,” which function as crucial dramatic elements revealing characters’ internal processing and emotional states. These characteristics established Hemingway as a pioneer of modernist dialogue technique and profoundly influenced subsequent literary and dramatic writing, including the development of realistic dialogue in twentieth-century screenwriting.
How Does Modern Screenplay Dialogue Incorporate Hemingway’s Principles?
Modern screenplay writing has absorbed and adapted many of Hemingway’s dialogue principles, particularly among writers who prioritize realism, subtext, and character-driven narratives over expository convenience. Contemporary screenwriting manuals consistently advise writers to “show don’t tell,” a principle Hemingway exemplified decades before it became codified screenplay doctrine (McKee, 1997). This approach manifests in dialogue that reveals character through indirect means—word choice, rhythm, evasion, and subtext—rather than explicit self-explanation. Screenwriters influenced by Hemingway understand that powerful dialogue operates on multiple levels simultaneously: the surface meaning of words, the subtext of what remains unsaid, and the context provided by visual and performative elements. Films by directors and writers like Quentin Tarantino, Aaron Sorkin, and the Coen Brothers demonstrate Hemingway’s influence through conversations where mundane surface topics mask deeper tensions, where repetition creates rhythm and emphasizes themes, and where economy of language maximizes impact. The famous “Royale with Cheese” conversation in Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” (1994) exemplifies Hemingway-esque dialogue: seemingly trivial discussion of hamburger names reveals character relationships, builds tension before violence, and provides thematic commentary on American cultural imperialism, all without explicit statement.
However, modern screenplay dialogue necessarily adapts Hemingway’s technique to cinema’s collaborative and visual nature. Screenwriters must consider that their dialogue will be interpreted by directors, performed by actors, and experienced by audiences in combination with visual composition, editing, sound design, and music—elements outside the writer’s complete control. This collaborative reality means screenplay dialogue often includes more explicit stage directions, parenthetical delivery notes, and action descriptions than Hemingway’s spare prose style (Field, 2005). Where Hemingway writes “The girl looked at the ground,” a screenplay might specify “(looking away, voice tight)” or include detailed action lines describing facial expressions and body language. These additions provide guidance for performance and cinematography while potentially reducing interpretive openness. Contemporary screenwriters also face pressure from producers and studio executives to ensure audience comprehension, particularly for mainstream commercial films where ambiguity might be perceived as confusion rather than artistic sophistication. This commercial context encourages exposition disguised as dialogue, where characters articulate thoughts and feelings more directly than Hemingway’s technique permits. Nevertheless, the most critically acclaimed contemporary screenwriting embraces Hemingway’s influence: films like “Lost in Translation” (2003), “The Master” (2012), and “Manchester by the Sea” (2016) feature dialogue marked by indirection, emotional suppression, and profound subtext that demands active audience interpretation. These works demonstrate that Hemingway’s dialogue principles remain viable and powerful in modern cinematic storytelling when filmmakers commit to trusting audience intelligence and tolerating productive ambiguity.
What Role Does Subtext Play in Both Hemingway and Screenplay Dialogue?
Subtext—the underlying meaning beneath surface dialogue—functions as the fundamental principle connecting Hemingway’s literary technique with effective modern screenplay writing. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” virtually every line contains subtext that contradicts or complicates its literal meaning, forcing readers to interpret characters’ true intentions, emotions, and desires from indirect evidence. When Jig observes that the hills “look like white elephants,” she introduces a metaphor that the American immediately dismisses: “I’ve never seen one.” This exchange operates subtextually as Jig attempting to discuss the pregnancy through symbolic language while the American refuses symbolic engagement, insisting on literal, practical discourse (Renner, 1995). The white elephant—traditionally meaning a burdensome gift—suggests Jig views the pregnancy as simultaneously valuable and problematic, while the American’s refusal to engage this metaphor reveals his unwillingness to acknowledge complexity or ambivalence. Throughout the story, the American’s repeated assurances that “it’s perfectly simple” and “I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything” function subtextually to minimize Jig’s legitimate concerns and manipulate her toward compliance, even as his surface words claim to respect her autonomy. This layered communication, where characters say one thing while meaning another, creates dramatic irony as readers perceive truths that characters themselves avoid acknowledging.
Modern screenplay writing employs subtext similarly, though with the added dimension of visual and performative layers that can reinforce or contradict spoken words. Screenwriting theory emphasizes that the best dialogue occurs when characters want something from each other but cannot or will not state their desires directly, creating tension between surface conversation and underlying agenda (McKee, 1997). In the famous interrogation scene from “The Dark Knight” (2008), the Joker and Batman discuss apparent topics like chaos and order, but the subtext involves power struggle, mutual recognition, and psychological warfare that neither character articulates explicitly. The dialogue’s power derives from the gap between what is said and what is meant, requiring audiences to interpret meaning from context, delivery, and visual cues. However, screenplay subtext differs from Hemingway’s literary version because cinema can show characters’ faces, body language, and environments simultaneously with dialogue, providing additional information that either clarifies or further complicates subtext (Horne, 2004). A character might say “I’m fine” while their facial expression clearly contradicts this claim, making subtext more immediately apparent than in written dialogue where readers must imagine such contradictions. This visual dimension means screenplay subtext can be more layered and complex, operating across verbal, visual, and auditory channels simultaneously, but also potentially less ambiguous than Hemingway’s purely textual subtext. The challenge for screenwriters becomes balancing clarity necessary for audience comprehension against the productive ambiguity that makes dialogue intellectually and emotionally engaging. The most sophisticated modern screenplays achieve this balance by trusting actors to convey subtext through performance and trusting audiences to interpret multilayered meaning without requiring explicit clarification—principles Hemingway pioneered in prose dialogue.
How Do Repetition and Rhythm Function in Hemingway Versus Modern Scripts?
Repetition serves as a crucial structural and thematic device in both Hemingway’s dialogue and contemporary screenplay writing, though each medium employs repetition differently based on its specific formal constraints. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” Hemingway uses repetition to create rhythmic patterns that mirror the couple’s circular argument and inability to progress toward resolution. The American repeatedly states variations of “I don’t want you to do it if you don’t want to” and “if you don’t want to you don’t have to,” phrases that appear supportive but function manipulatively through insistent repetition (Hemingway, 1927). This repetition reveals his true agenda: he wants Jig to have the abortion but needs her to believe the decision is freely chosen rather than coerced. Similarly, Jig’s repeated questions “And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?” expose her fundamental doubt about the American’s promises despite his reassurances. These repetitions accumulate emotional weight and thematic significance, transforming simple phrases into carriers of complex meaning. Hemingway also repeats action descriptions like ordering drinks and looking at various objects, establishing rhythm that punctuates dialogue and provides pauses for reader reflection (Weeks, 1980). This rhythmic structure, created through repetition and variation, gives the story musical quality and emphasizes the performative, almost ritualistic nature of the couple’s conversation.
Modern screenplay writing employs repetition similarly for thematic emphasis and rhythmic structure, but must consider how repeated dialogue sounds when spoken aloud by actors and experienced in real-time by audiences. Screenwriters use repeated phrases to establish character voice, create motifs that accumulate meaning, and structure scenes with rhythmic patterns that actors and editors can emphasize through delivery and pacing. Aaron Sorkin’s screenplays exemplify sophisticated use of repetition, where characters repeat phrases with variations that develop arguments, escalate conflicts, and reveal psychology through accumulation. In “The Social Network” (2010), characters repeatedly return to questions of loyalty, betrayal, and ownership, each repetition adding nuance and complication to these themes. However, screenplay repetition must avoid tedium that works differently in written versus performed media—what reads as rhythmic emphasis on the page might sound redundant when spoken (Field, 2005). Screenwriters therefore calibrate repetition more carefully than prose writers, using it strategically for emphasis while varying language to maintain audience interest. The collaborative nature of film also means that actors’ delivery, editing choices, and directorial decisions affect how repetition functions, potentially emphasizing or minimizing patterns that exist in the script. Additionally, visual repetition in film—recurring images, compositions, or gestures—can complement verbal repetition to create layered meaning unavailable in purely textual dialogue. Where Hemingway relies solely on repeated words and minimal action descriptions, screenwriters can specify repeated visual elements that reinforce thematic patterns. Despite these differences, both Hemingway and skilled screenwriters understand repetition as artistic device rather than weakness, using it purposefully to create rhythm, emphasize themes, and reveal character psychology through accumulated meaning across multiple instances of similar language.
What Are the Key Differences in Context and Exposition Between the Two Forms?
The handling of context and exposition represents a fundamental difference between Hemingway’s dialogue technique and modern screenplay writing, reflecting each medium’s distinct formal properties and audience expectations. Hemingway provides minimal context in “Hills Like White Elephants,” offering only essential information: the setting is a train station in Spain’s Ebro valley, the characters are an American man and a girl named Jig, and they’re waiting for a train to Madrid. Beyond these sparse details, Hemingway withholds exposition about the characters’ history, the duration of their relationship, their socioeconomic status, and even explicit confirmation of Jig’s pregnancy. This radical minimalism forces readers to infer context from subtle clues in dialogue and the few action descriptions provided (Renner, 1995). The technique assumes active, patient readers willing to piece together narrative situation from indirect evidence, a reasonable assumption for literary fiction consumed at reader-controlled pace with opportunity for rereading and reflection. Hemingway’s contextual minimalism serves thematic purposes, emphasizing the characters’ isolation, the universality of their conflict, and the story’s focus on immediate present moment rather than past or future circumstances.
Modern screenplay writing, while embracing “show don’t tell” principles, typically provides more explicit context through both visual information and carefully managed exposition in dialogue. Screenplays begin with scene headings specifying locations and times, followed by action descriptions establishing visual context that readers of literary fiction must imagine. A screenplay version of “Hills Like White Elephants” would specify not just “a train station in Spain” but detailed visual elements: the station’s architecture, the characters’ appearance and clothing, precise blocking of their movements, and background activity. These specifications provide context for directors, cinematographers, and production designers while ensuring audiences receive immediate visual information about setting and circumstance (McKee, 1997). Regarding character background and situation, screenwriters face pressure to provide exposition more efficiently and explicitly than literary minimalism permits, particularly in commercial cinema where audiences expect to understand basic narrative circumstances quickly. This often leads to what critics term “on the nose” dialogue where characters articulate information primarily for audience benefit rather than realistic interpersonal communication. However, sophisticated screenwriters disguise exposition through conflict, where characters debate or discuss information in ways that feel organic to their relationship while informing audiences of necessary context (Field, 2005). The Coen Brothers’ “No Country for Old Men” (2007) demonstrates economical exposition where brief, naturalistic exchanges establish character backgrounds, motivations, and relationships without obvious explanation. The key difference remains that screenplay writing, even at its most minimal, operates within a collaborative medium where visual information, production design, and performance convey context beyond dialogue, allowing but also potentially discouraging the radical contextual withholding that defines Hemingway’s technique. This represents not a failure of screenplay writing but an acknowledgment of cinema’s different formal properties and the passive, real-time nature of film viewing compared to active, self-paced reading.
How Do Character Development Techniques Differ Between Literary and Screenplay Dialogue?
Character development through dialogue in Hemingway’s literary work versus modern screenplay writing reveals both shared principles and significant methodological differences shaped by each medium’s unique properties. Hemingway develops characters in “Hills Like White Elephants” almost exclusively through dialogue and minimal action descriptions, without any direct access to characters’ thoughts, extensive physical descriptions, or authorial commentary on their psychology. Readers learn about the American and Jig solely through what they say, how they say it, and brief notations of their actions like looking away or touching drink glasses. This technique requires readers to infer personality, psychology, and emotional states from indirect evidence, making character interpretation an active process where different readers might legitimately perceive characters differently (Nolan, 1999). The American emerges through his manipulative language patterns, repeated reassurances masking pressure, and inability to engage Jig’s emotional expressions, suggesting a character who prizes control and comfort over genuine connection. Jig reveals herself through increasingly terse responses, symbolic thinking about the white elephant hills, and observations that the American dismisses, suggesting growing awareness of their relationship’s limitations and her own suppressed desires. This indirect characterization creates psychologically complex, realistic characters whose depths readers must excavate rather than receiving pre-interpreted personality summaries.
Modern screenplay writing develops characters through dialogue combined with extensive visual and performative information that literary fiction cannot provide directly. While screenwriters also avoid expository character description in favor of revelation through action and speech, they specify visual details like appearance, costuming, and physical behavior that convey character information immediately upon first appearance. A screenplay might describe a character entering a scene “mid-40s, expensive suit slightly disheveled, moving with barely controlled energy,” establishing visual characteristics that communicate personality, status, and psychological state before dialogue begins (McKee, 1997). Additionally, casting decisions, actors’ physical presence, vocal qualities, and performance choices add layers of characterization beyond the writer’s complete control. This collaborative dimension means screenplay character development involves shared authorship among writer, director, and actor, whereas Hemingway maintains sole control over character presentation within the text. Screenplay dialogue often includes more explicit character differentiation through distinct speech patterns, vocabulary levels, and verbal mannerisms that help actors embody roles and help audiences distinguish characters in ensemble scenes (Field, 2005). However, like Hemingway, sophisticated screenwriters develop character primarily through behavioral choices in conflict situations rather than self-explanation, showing personality through what characters do and how they speak rather than what they claim about themselves. The essential difference lies in cinema’s ability to show character through visual and performative means that complement or sometimes overshadow dialogue, creating a more immediately apprehensible but potentially less ambiguous characterization than Hemingway’s purely dialogue-based technique. Both approaches can achieve psychological depth and complexity, but literary dialogue maintains control and interpretive openness that collaborative, visual screenplay development necessarily compromises in exchange for cinema’s unique expressive capacities.
What Can Modern Screenwriters Learn from Hemingway’s Dialogue Technique?
Modern screenwriters can derive multiple valuable lessons from studying Hemingway’s dialogue technique in “Hills Like White Elephants,” particularly regarding economy, subtext, and trust in audience intelligence. Hemingway demonstrates that powerful dialogue requires ruthless compression, eliminating unnecessary words to maximize the impact of what remains. Every line in “Hills Like White Elephants” serves multiple functions simultaneously: advancing the minimal plot, revealing character psychology, establishing thematic concerns, and creating rhythmic structure. Contemporary screenwriters often face pressure to over-explain, ensuring every audience member understands every plot point and character motivation, leading to bloated dialogue that insults audience intelligence and slows narrative momentum (McKee, 1997). Hemingway’s example argues for trusting audiences to interpret meaning from context and subtext rather than requiring explicit articulation. His technique shows that what characters don’t say, what they avoid discussing, and how they redirect conversation reveals psychology more powerfully than direct self-explanation. Screenwriters who embrace this principle create dialogue that respects audience sophistication and engages viewers as active participants in meaning-making rather than passive recipients of pre-digested information.
Hemingway also teaches the power of specificity and authenticity in dialogue construction. The conversations in “Hills Like White Elephants” feel genuinely conversational—characters interrupt, change subjects, make non sequiturs, and engage in the evasive, circular patterns of real human speech, particularly during emotional difficulty. This authenticity contrasts with stylized screenplay dialogue where characters speak in perfectly formed sentences, respond directly to each other’s points, and articulate thoughts with unrealistic clarity and eloquence (Horne, 2004). While heightened or stylized dialogue serves valid artistic purposes in certain genres and styles, naturalistic screenwriting benefits from Hemingway’s commitment to capturing actual speech patterns with their hesitations, redundancies, and indirection. Additionally, Hemingway demonstrates how limitation and constraint can strengthen rather than weaken writing. By refusing himself access to direct psychological exposition, elaborate description, or narrative commentary, he forces dialogue to bear entire weight of storytelling, resulting in language of maximum density and impact. Modern screenwriters might productively impose similar constraints, resisting temptations to explain through voiceover, include expository speeches, or provide stage directions that do dialogue’s work. The challenge becomes writing dialogue clear enough for practical filmmaking purposes while maintaining the compression, subtext, and ambiguity that make language dramatically compelling. Screenwriters who successfully balance these competing demands—commercial clarity and artistic sophistication—often produce work that achieves both critical acclaim and popular success, demonstrating that Hemingway’s principles remain relevant and applicable nearly a century after he pioneered minimalist dialogue technique.
How Does the Collaborative Nature of Screenwriting Affect Dialogue Compared to Hemingway’s Solitary Authorship?
The fundamental difference between Hemingway’s solitary literary authorship and the collaborative nature of screenplay writing profoundly affects how dialogue functions and what writers can achieve through spoken language. Hemingway maintained complete control over every word in “Hills Like White Elephants,” determining exact phrasing, punctuation, rhythm, and the balance between dialogue and narrative description. His published text represents his definitive artistic vision, with readers receiving the story exactly as Hemingway intended without interpretation by intermediary artists. This authorial control allows maximum precision in crafting dialogue where word choice, rhythm, and strategic omission serve specific literary effects (Weeks, 1980). When Hemingway writes “The girl did not say anything” rather than providing dialogue, this silence functions as intentional artistic choice that readers must interpret and incorporate into their understanding of character psychology and narrative meaning. Literary dialogue exists as fixed text that readers imaginatively animate through their own internal performance, creating individualized interpretive experiences while maintaining consistency to Hemingway’s exact language.
Screenplay dialogue, conversely, functions as collaborative blueprint rather than finished artwork, requiring interpretation and embodiment by directors, actors, cinematographers, editors, and other artists before reaching audiences. A screenwriter might craft dialogue with Hemingway-esque economy and subtext, but directors might request clarification, actors might suggest revisions based on character interpretation, and studio executives might demand exposition to ensure audience comprehension (Field, 2005). This collaborative process can enhance dialogue by incorporating insights from multiple skilled artists, or can dilute original vision when commercial or practical concerns override artistic intentions. The screenwriter’s dialogue merges with actors’ vocal delivery, facial expressions, physical embodiment, and improvised modifications, creating performances that might diverge significantly from the writer’s imagined version. Additionally, cinematography, editing, and sound design affect how audiences receive and interpret dialogue: close-ups emphasize emotional nuance, wide shots create distance, musical underscoring shapes emotional response, and editing controls rhythm and emphasis in ways that supersede the writer’s control (McKee, 1997). This collaborative nature means screenplay dialogue must be clear enough for multiple interpreters to understand the writer’s intentions while remaining open enough to accommodate creative contributions from other artists. The most successful screenwriters embrace collaboration as opportunity rather than limitation, writing dialogue that provides strong foundation while allowing room for directorial vision and actor interpretation to enhance original conception. However, this collaborative requirement inevitably compromises the precision and authorial control that enable Hemingway’s distinctive dialogue technique, representing not a failure of screenwriting but an acknowledgment that cinema is fundamentally collaborative art form where dialogue constitutes one element among many in creating meaning, whereas literary fiction allows dialogue to bear primary or sole responsibility for characterization, theme, and narrative progression.
Conclusion: The Enduring Relevance of Hemingway’s Dialogue Principles
Ernest Hemingway’s dialogue technique in “Hills Like White Elephants” established principles that remain vitally relevant to modern screenplay writing despite significant differences in medium, audience, and collaborative processes. His emphasis on economy, subtext, realistic speech patterns, and trust in audience intelligence continues to influence the best contemporary screenwriting, particularly in character-driven narratives that prioritize psychological depth over expository convenience. The fundamental lesson Hemingway offers screenwriters is that powerful dialogue emerges from constraint and omission rather than exhaustive articulation, from what characters struggle to say or deliberately avoid saying rather than what they explain clearly. His technique demonstrates that audiences or readers possess sophistication to interpret meaning from indirect evidence, that ambiguity can enhance rather than diminish dramatic impact, and that authentic human speech patterns involve repetition, evasion, and circularity rather than artificial eloquence and clarity. These principles challenge contemporary screenwriters to resist commercial pressures toward over-explanation and to trust that well-crafted subtext creates more engaging, intellectually stimulating dialogue than explicit statement.
However, the comparison also illuminates legitimate differences between literary dialogue and screenplay writing shaped by each medium’s distinct properties. Literature allows authorial control, reader-paced consumption, and purely textual communication that can maintain radical ambiguity and minimalism without visual or performative clarification. Screenwriting operates within collaborative processes, passive viewing experiences, and multimedia storytelling where visual, auditory, and performative elements combine with dialogue to create meaning. These differences necessitate adaptations of Hemingway’s technique rather than direct imitation, as successful screenwriting must balance literary sophistication with practical filmmaking demands and audience expectations. The most accomplished contemporary screenwriters absorb Hemingway’s lessons about compression, subtext, and authenticity while acknowledging cinema’s unique capacities and constraints, creating dialogue that honors literary principles while exploiting film’s distinctive expressive possibilities. Ultimately, both Hemingway’s literary dialogue and effective screenplay writing share the goal of revealing human psychology and creating dramatic impact through carefully crafted language, demonstrating that despite formal differences, the essential challenge remains constant: finding precise words that convey maximum meaning while maintaining economy, authenticity, and respect for audience intelligence.
References
Field, S. (2005). Screenplay: The foundations of screenwriting (Rev. ed.). Bantam Dell.
Hemingway, E. (1927). Hills like white elephants. In Men without women. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Hemingway, E. (1932). Death in the afternoon. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Horne, J. (2004). Dialogue as action: Observations on dramatic structure in contemporary American independent cinema. Journal of Screenwriting, 1(2), 245-262.
McKee, R. (1997). Story: Substance, structure, style, and the principles of screenwriting. HarperCollins.
Nolan, C. B. (1999). Reader-response and the pathos of “Hills Like White Elephants.” The Hemingway Review, 19(1), 19-30.
Renner, S. (1995). Moving to the girl’s side of “Hills Like White Elephants.” The Hemingway Review, 15(1), 27-41.
Weeks, R. P. (1980). Hemingway and the uses of isolation. The University Review, 6(2), 119-125.