Topic: Pretentious Purple Prose
Chapter Written By: JadedElegance
Level: Advanced
Related genre(s): All

What is purple prose?

Purple prose is what happens when descriptive writers go too far and clutter an otherwise good story with every adjective, adverb, and feeling that can fit in one sentence. Building a story is a lot like planting your garden. If you put a patch of lilacs here or there, they are pretty and appealing. If you cover your entire yard with them, your house smells like you bottle perfume for a living and you can't go outside because of all the bees the flowers attract.

You can have too much of a good thing.

You'll learn fairly early on if you have a knack for descriptive writing, or if your characters shine a bit more brightly than your plot. You may hear your style is "poetic", "literary", or "intelligent".

When you take these strengths too far, you become flowery, pedantic, and irritating. Purple prose is off-putting to the reader in the same way a very strong perfume may overwhelm most people.

Your prose becomes purple when you describe needlessly, inserting phrases just because they sound poetic. It turns purple when you're fond of adding extraneous details to show off how well-versed you are. Many people, even some of literature's most memorable authors, fall into this trap. It is the equivalent of a gifted singer too in love with the sound of her own voice, so that every note becomes trilled and embellished.

What's the difference between descriptive writing and purple prose?

While both describe, purple prose overloads every sentence with descriptions of extraneous details that add nothing to the story. A writer with a strong lyrical or poetic quality to his writing, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, will use far more in the way of descriptive elements than an author like his rival Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway's journalistic tone is quite opposite from Fitzgerald's descriptive style, but both use language masterfully.

Here's an example of fluid descriptive writing, from Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.:

"His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete."

This example uses a lot of metaphors, adjectives, and focuses a lot on description. It makes use of the beauty of language in a poetic way, a style some readers enjoy and others absolutely detest. However, it does it in the proper fashion. It describes an action, elicits an emotion, and though it is descriptive, there's a point to each phrase.

The language is used to enhance the telling (and showing) of the story, and it isn't littered with big words and unnecessary adverbs at the end of each sentence. Fitzgerald forgoes the "-ly" words completely, opting instead for descriptive metaphors. As mentioned in an earlier article, he also makes use of alternating sentence length, so that the shortest sentence tells and doesn't show. Yet, it carries the greatest emotional impact.

"Then he kissed her."

Because of the descriptive framing of this paragraph, so much is said in so few words. It's beautiful, it's romantic, it's what readers of this type of book are looking for.

Okay, that was good. What's purple prose again?

Purple prose is when the author uses needlessly flowery or inappropriate language to complete a description. Adverbs have fallen from grace because of the tendency of writers of popular fiction to paint entire books purple by adding adverbs to make language "more accessible".

If you are writing in a more descriptive style of language, adding adverbs so you don't have to describe things sells the reader short. It's like saying your reader is too stupid to take anything away from proper descriptive techniques. It also minimizes the emotional impact of your story. Let's contrast the scene where Daisy and Gatsby kiss to the infamous Bella and Edward from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight:

"His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday's hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface. He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn't sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal."

Unlike the passage from Fitzgerald, this one doesn't carry any emotional weight. Fitzgerald going all out and describing the kiss as something almost heaven-sent may be a bit much for some readers and some genres. However, it uses lyrical language to depict an action, tension between characters, and the inevitable climax---double entendre intended.

In the passage by Meyers, Edward is sleeping, even though he's not. The same word count that describes the moment between Daisy and Gatsby that readers waited for the entire novel is used to relate the fact that Edward is lying in the grass. There's no purpose behind the description. It doesn't further the plot, except to tell us in the lore of Twilight, vampires sparkle.

We get it, he's a good-looking vampire. However, there is no action, no romantic connection, no inevitable and satisfying conclusion that makes words like "incandescent" and "scintillating" necessary. Meyers' book is written for a younger audience than Fitzgerald's, yet her choice of words is more complex.

Don't get me started on the fact that if you have to use the word "literally", your descriptive writing skills have failed you.

I write romance novels. Isn't this purple prose stuff good?

No.

One of the reasons the romance genre is often mocked, despite being one of the most popular in both classic and modern-day literature, is the dependence on purple prose.

Romance writers tend to be a more descriptive type, along with fantasy and supernatural authors. Whether you're describing a magical land or a fairy tale wedding, the reader wants to feel a part of the experience.

That's exactly why you don't colour your pages purple. Purple prose isn't romantic, fantastical, or enticing. It removes the reader from the world you've worked so hard to create.

Some are so bad, you'll actually laugh.

Purple patches, the name given for spots here and there that become rambling or self-indulgent, will often be forgiven from an otherwise talented writer. Purple prose, however, is a way to make sure that even if your story makes a million dollars, it will be mocked endlessly.

However popular, bad writing is just bad writing.