I honestly hated those BS things when they started coming out of not just fanfic but pro writing advice back in the 90s and 00s.
That’s how long I’ve been holding a grudge against Blanket General Absolutist Writing Advice, by the way. Thirty years now. People would post it on writing lists, or on message boards and I would be the only one going “okay except how the fuck else do you describe that”. Certain Fucking People’s much-vaunted “lists” of how a whole bunch of shit was stupid. Endless complaints about “emerald eyes” with “lololol so sharp edged and glass-looking?” and oh my god how about you fuck off.
And yes, before you go there: I do know the stuff they were reacting to, and the overwhelming trends, and the so forth and so on, and this was still the stupid, wrong way to approach the issue.
Half the time the “purple” prose they were complaining about was literally a deliberate genre feature. You don’t have to LIKE it, but at some point complaining about metaphorical or evocative or otherwise lush language is like complaining about Cats in the Cat Cafe: just stop going to the fucking Cat Cafe, it’s a cafe for cats, what the fuck did you expect to find here, why did you think you’d be able to avoid cats. If you do not like chocolate maybe don’t go to the chocolate festival!
There are almost always examples of the metaphor or whatever that were given a pass and people would bend over BACKWARDS to find a reason but the reason, when it came down to it, is “it was to my taste here/I thought it worked here, I didn’t think it worked over here.” There might be other reasons that it worked or didn’t. (“This character’s narrative voice has been absolutely pragmatic and blunt prose until now and suddenly his love interest has cerulean orbs, what the fuck”.) It might just be a word you personally hate, or a construction you dislike. That’s fine! But an Absolute Truth does not arise from a question of taste.
Again: this is a taste issue. I used to get into huge fights about it being a taste issue at the time, and I will still fight you about it now. Certain tastes can and will become dominant in a cultural zeitgeist (ie more people will have a taste for X or Y or Z kind of prose or even X or Y or Z kind of food in a particular cultural context) and so you will have a better chance of appealing to more people if you follow the current tastes but it’s all fluid, it’s all flexible, and it’s all subjective.
Potentially useful advice on the subject is going to a) come from someone whose taste you care about (ie this is the kind of person you’re writing for), and b) is going to be specific - “I think this piece of yours is using this kind of thing too often and it’s getting distracting” or “I feel like using ‘chuckle’ here gives the wrong vibe/imagery” or whatever. And note I said POTENTIALLY. And that’s for EDITING.
For writing use whatever word is gonna get you to the next word, you can fix it later.
janainaart
yousharknotpass
theartofmadeline
dededos
