This has been bothering me lately and I figured I’d say it before I lose the inspiration to make comment.
The tumblr RP community in my experience as of late harshly overuses the term “purple prose” to a point that for me, as someone with a lot of experience with writing and someone who has published before and taught creative writing courses, it is just grossly unacceptable.
I feel like it’s getting to the point that it snuffs out creativity before it has the chance to bloom. A part of writing is experimenting with styles and apparently that is seen by many, as purple prose. A lot of things that are not purple prose are considered to be in the community. So I’ve decide to add my two cents in about what purple prose is as someone that’s published my own works and has helped others publish their works.
I’ve seen purple prose. A lot of what people are describing or getting uppity with others about is not purple prose.
hypersensualized/sexualized descriptions of mundane things that does not add to the meaning of the character or plot
too many descriptive words to the point it becomes repetitive, cluttered and confusing
overuse of the thesaurus to the point the word doesn’t mean what the simpler, better word would
overuse of the thesaurus to the point readers constantly (constantly, not occasionally) have to stop to look up the definition of a word
so much description after multiple lines of dialogue that people have to go back and re-read what was said (unless you are doing this purposefully as a literary device)
broad, sweeping descriptions that are injected with too much descriptive words to the point that it either doesn’t make sense, is difficult to read, or loses the interest of the reader
descriptions that are so loaded and ornate that they break the flow of a read and draw attention to themselves
over using alliteration in one sentence to the point it becomes confusing and breaks the flow
overusing metaphors (i.e. every other sentence is a simile or metaphor). extended metaphors don’t count.
What purple prose is NOT:
experimenting with style and flow
going into detail about something
experimenting with formatting (i.e. small text, icons, headers and footers, spaced out words, etc.)
utilizing abstract imagery to portray a concept
emphasizing character traits through literary devices
exploring emotions, feelings, thoughts, moods, and other internal things a character experiences in great detail
It’s beginning to seem like the second someone steps out of the boundary of clean cut, simple writing it’s being labeled purple prose and that is absolutely not the case and it is just really upsetting to me as a writer because it sucks the creativity out of it. When you tell someone their writing is purple prose for illegitimate reasons you are telling them that their writing is wrong and that’s just not cool to me. It reads as controlling and conformative in a way that is the opposite of constructive in writing.
I see a lot of people get messages about their writing being purple prose (when it usually isn’t) and the messenger usually does nothing to lend advice, express why it is purple prose or lend a criticism about how they can better their writing. It’s literally just a “this is purple prose, it’s wrong, your writing is bad” and I’m not entirely sure that’s how it works friend.
Purple prose is about context, there are places where it could be utilized purposefully to make a statement, but when it is overused to the point you:
can’t understand what’s been written
constantly have to look up the definition of words
are detracted from the deeper meaning by unnecessary description
can’t get a sense of what is happening because there’s too much description
that is when there is an issue.
And the best way to go about fixing it is not pointing fingers and telling “THIS IS PURPLE PROSE” and throwing a tantrum in someone’s inbox, the best way to go about fixing it is constructive, polite criticism. Preferably you should message them off anon about it. Send a message like “Hey, sorry to bother you, I enjoy threading with you (or maybe you haven’t so “I haven’t threaded with you”) but I noticed your writing was getting kind of loaded and hard to understand, maybe you should use less descriptive words to make it more understandable.”
That’s just an example. But for one thing, people shouldn’t demonize others for their use of purple prose, you shouldn’t attack them, you shouldn’t make it out to be the worst thing on the planet. It’s really just upsetting me, honestly.
I’ve said this already, but the misinformation about purple prose that people seem to have is causing a lot of people (including myself) to get messages about how our writing is purple prose garbage and that they don’t like it.
Now try telling them why it is purple prose and what they can do to help instead of being a passive aggressive asshole. That might help.
