What's wrong with purple prose? How is it different from good description?

What's wrong with purple prose? How is it different from good description?

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Imagine you're eating some good as fuck food.

Damn that was some good as fuck food. I loved the taste and shit idk.

Now imagine you're eating some good as fuck food again. This time there's more so you finish it all and you're full. But then there's more again so you go on and eat that. Then you puke because there was too much good food. You wish there was less of the food.

Ah, what isn't wrong with purple prose? Grandiose overindulgence for people who believe, falsely, that consulting a thesaurus will make their intelligence seem higher. How often I read a novel with purple prose only for it to make my countenance fall and my interesting change to naught. The quick page turning becoming slow as I must suffer myself to read this sesquipedalian verbiage. This excessively technical and overwhelmingly poetic language can make me feel like I'm drowning in a heavy lake of perfume with my breast permanently under the water and but for my neck I would drown. I only wish that I could read a novel that might get to the point quicker, that won't try so hard to make itself seem like a novel for geniuses of Newtonian levels. If I find a novel of short words with quick descriptions I find it invigorating, and the book will cleave to my bosom as I devour every word the author thought to put forth upon the page. Hemingway, he was a man simplistic in his methods and writing. That is how a book is. You look at a paragraph, read it, and erase it all but for just one sentence. All else is the excess and vanity of an author who believes himself more important than he truly is.

read Proust

Shit user. Well done. Wanna share any of your other writings?

That was good though

Honestly I think a lot of what gets called purple prose is appropriate for context, and a lot of things that don't get called purple prose probably deserve the title. Style of prose only matters so far as it helps a text accomplish its purpose. If it does, there's literally nothing to complain about.

OP here. Is this purple? People keep telling me it is:

The leaves danced that morning, gently sashaying in the icy winds of dawn. I followed one with my eyes, and it gracefully descended from the limber branches of the trees to the earth that had whitened in the cold of the night before. The frost sparkled with dew, kissed by the warmth of nature’s breath. I lay in the soft snow and gazed at the light filtering through the gregarious trees. As I sat up, I scrutinized my surroundings and stretched my limbs. I inhaled the invigorating mist of morning; the scent of life was deliciously fresh, a crisp aroma in the air. The sky was purely white behind the silhouettes of the trees on the horizon. It felt as though I were in an abyss where being ended alongside the limits of my vision. I closed my eyes for a bit, just to savor the moment. Then it was time to move.

Literally impossible to tell without context. Actually, I just realized why this entire board is a joke, lol.

It's the first paragraph of the story. It's supposed to characterize the narrator as someone who feels very happy and comfortable in the forest.

t. pseudo intellectual

The term purple prose in general is very pseud. There's a difference between sincerely beautiful and masterful writing, and poorly written passages that try too hard and make you want to puke: one is just good writing that you may lack the intelligence to appreciate, and the other is garbage vomited on a page.

Yeah, that seems a bit purple for an introduction, Mostly it's just a lack of variety. Simpler sentences would help emphasize certain things, make it more readable, add better rhythm/cadence, etc. It's monotonously stilted for no reason, even though it's not excessively stilted.

> Leaves dancing and sashaying: They mean two very different things.
> Icy winds of dawn: Sounds like a storm, not a gentle morning.
> descended from the limber branches of the trees: Descended is a technical word in what is meant to be an almost poetic sentence.
> frost sparkled with dew, kissed by the warmth of nature’s breath: Frost and warmth...pick one. Also what has breath got to do with nature here?
> Lay in the soft snow: Who the fuck lays in the snow!?. Is what your reader is thinking.
> Gregarious trees: Again with using technical terms in what is meant to be descriptive or a poetic sentence.
> I scrutinized my surroundings: We just jumped from relaxing morning to paranoid about what's around you.
> the scent of life was deliciously fresh, a crisp aroma in the air: Leave synesthesia to the poets. It isn't doing you any favours.
> It felt as though I were in an abyss: Again you ruin the pleasant morning. Plus, you make everything you have described redundant seeing as a void is an absence of everything.

Your piece is all over the place and really needs some tweaking. Re-read it and keep ONE idea in mind. Then edit the words to fit the one idea. It will be better.

>redundant descriptions
>adverbs gumming up the piece
>using cheap alliteration to create a sense of flow

Yeah, you gotta work on this one

I found this passage confusing, you say its cold but then "the warmth of nature's breath"

phrashing is confusing. think clearer. cut adverbs. reduce it to three sentences tops.

congrats, you've got a good paragraph now.

>In pompous introductions, and such as promise a great deal, it generally happens that one or two verses of purple patch-work, that may make a great show, are tagged on; as when the grove and the altar of Diana and the meandering of a current hastening through pleasant fields, or the river Rhine, or the rainbow is described. But here there was no room for these [fine things]: perhaps, too, you know how to draw a cypress: but what is that to the purpose, if he, whe is painted for the given price, is [to be represented as] swimming hopeless out of a shipwreck? A large vase at first was designed: why, as the wheel revolves, turns out a little pitcher? In a word, be your subject what it will, let it be merely simple and uniform.

ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/horace/works/book10.html

It amazes me how many people forget the simple rule of just keeping it simple.

But hey, let them play, it's fun to watch.

>The leaves danced, sashaying in the icy winds of dawn. I followed one of them with my eyes as it fell from the limber branches of the trees, then stretched my limbs to inhale the invigorating mist of morning. The smell of life, a crisp aroma in the air. The sky was pure white behind the silhouettes of the horizon. I closed my eyes for a bit; it was time to move.

Fixed it.
t. editor

>sashaying
kys

There's still more to cut if you pay attention to it. My advice is: don't put words in it only because you think they're "pretty". But them in if they have a narrative purpose.

Don't be a cunt, this is good enough for an introduction. It sets the scene and its feel.
Not everything has to be literally shaved down to a dull, minimalist piece of shit, jesus fuck.

>The leaves danced as they fell from the branches of the trees. I stretched my limbs to inhale the mist of morning. The smell of life, a crisp aroma in the air. The sky was pure white behind the silhouettes of the horizon. I closed my eyes for a bit; it was time to move.

>keep it simple
> information must be relevantnt to the story

YOU'RE WRITING LITERATURE, LADIES. NOT A FUCKING INSTRUCTION MANUAL FOR A LAWNMOWER.

anyone would think you hated words

Purple prose isn't good prose for one. It's prose that THINKS it's good, and in fact is egomaniacal in love with itself so much that it distracts from whatever the hell it's attempting to talk about.

See Gravity's Rainbow for examples.

I'm an actual proponent of poetic prose and love to read it as long as thr author know what they're doing. user clearly doesn't. It's just easier to start minimal and build up on it.

>The leaves fall from the trees. I inhale the mist of morning, the smell of life, an aroma in the air. The sky is pure white through the horizon. I close my eyes for a bit and it is time to move.

What the fuck are you talking about lmao? Just because user can't write yet he should overshoot with the cutting and reduce all his writing into a series of bullet points? That's just the opposite shitty extreme.
The t. editor edit is good enough for you user, look at that and do that for now. You can fix more things later.

only if you have the lungs for the whole distance

>complains about purple prose
>rights in purple prose

Fucking brainlet.

I am the t. editor, retard.

What I'm saying is - and most writers would agree - it's easier to improve your "poetic writing" if you have a sense of what is essential do the text. You need to simplify in order to know where and how to accomodate your personal style.

reddit

Found the dumb shitskin.

bait or double bait?

my money is on bait

>and most writers would agree
Don't fucking try this.

Anyway, user can learn more by just shooting for the middle ground instead of fucking himself in the ass with either extreme and that's about all that I have really left to say here. I have just been repeating myself for the last 3 posts.

You think that should be the first line of the novel? Really? And that should express the calm of morning? I know I need to develop the paragraph, and this was only a first draft, but that seems like way too much cutting down.

>dancing in the wind
Overused descriptor

Leaves don't gracefully descend. They travel along wind currents to a point where gravity meets solid mass.

Purple but most just excessive.

This. You sound like a rapper who has some fun ideas but can't maintain conceptual consistency. That doesn't mean it's bad, just amateurish.

Best bait I've seen in a long time

It was a joke, user.

Purple prose is essentially naive.
Just as pretentious prose is obfuscating.

Think of purple prose, being naive, as the work of someone without much sophistication who would describe things with flowery language that don't deserve it. They seem to deserve the flowery language because the writer is naive and imagines they're very important, while the less naive writer laughs at the idea of them. Purple prose is what readers laugh at for being depicted with such grandiloquent language while being actually inconsequential.

Like trying to make the trite into something profound.

Oh

cut down on adjectives and adverbs and this would feel less dense and obese and flow more naturally

...

bait/10

>well done
What are you talking about? Even as satire, this is pathetically bad. What do you idiots read to consistently find shit like this good?

There is nothing wrong with it if done right, you guys need to stop being idiots

purple prose, by definition isn't doing it right.

But neither is writing sparse, pseudo-Hemingway minimalist garbage

>The quick page turning becoming slow as I must suffer myself to read this sesquipedalian verbiage.
Fucking kek'd out loud. A+

no stupid, purple prose means, by definition, writing in a grandiose, flourishing, yet bad style.

If it isn't bad, then it's not purple prose.

>If it isn't bad, then it's not purple prose.
I was talking about not writing well, not about purple prose.

no you weren't.

I think what people really mean by purple prose isn't something that's overly descriptive, but when you can tell an author is punching above their weight and isn't comfortable with the expressions they're using, so it sounds pretentious/amateurish.

Good description adds lots of relevant information. Purple prose stretches very little relevant information out over an entire paragraph.

As a rule, every clause should introduce a new concept.

Nothing gets by you, does it?

Yes, and it's cliche as fuck. An excess of "beautiful" description is tacky and vulgar, it's like wearing a diamond ring on every finger. And phrases like "scrutinized my surroundings" and "stretched my limbs" are dim and general.