let’s talk about ~flowery~ writing 🌸 “purple prose” and how to avoid it
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- Опубліковано 4 сер 2024
- melodramatic or poetic? let's dive into the meaning of "purple prose", how subjective it is, tips for how writers can avoid it and why flowery writing isn't a bad thing, actually.
timestamps:
0:00 purple prose and subjectivity
3:02 debunking flowery = bad
4:43 time and place
5:40 in defense of flowery writing
8:33 tips for avoiding purple prose
12:19 everyone's favourite purple prose man
16:01 de-purpling my old writing
22:52 tell me YOUR favourite flowery passages
_____
more videos:
✨dealing with loneliness as a writer: • dealing with lonelines...
✨editing YOUR writing: • editing *your* stories...
/ about /
i'm kris (she/her), a speculative fiction writer documenting my writing process, ongoing projects and chatting about craft ☀️
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your love for Fitzgerald's writing is contagious 💓 Diversity in writing styles should be celebrated, not suppressed. these deep analysis videos are wonderful, I love hearing your thoughts on subjects like this!
My writing style has always been a little bit flowery because that's how I was taught to write and how I like to describe things, but when I read flowery writing, my brain goes numb from stupidity
“a kind of acidic delight that eroded you so slowly, you didn’t notice until you were sitting in the dust of your own mistakes.” kris pls spare just a crumb of your talent i am begging 🥲
😭😭😭😭💛
“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” ~ 1984 👁️✍️
I'm a sucker for flowery prose but I can never incorporate it into my own writing.
it takes a lot of reading and a lot of practice! it's also totally normal to enjoy a writing style without writing in it yourself since it depends on the tone of your stories :)
hey i love Fitzgerald’s prose too, though it’s so hard to put into words why i love it that at this point i think it’s really just a question of taste. It’s like if you vibe with the voice of a particular singer, maybe? As you say tho, i think it’s super important that writers (and especially new writers) know that it’s ok to explore flowery styles!
as for examples of purple prose that i like, one of my fav writers is alan hollinghurst, who in turn takes inspiration from henry james (who is king of convoluted sentences). i love hollinghurst's writing because for me it always rings so true to life. i feel like i am there next to the awful people he writes about, living their moments. here is a passage from the end of chapter 1 of /the line of beauty/ that isn’t particularly beautiful in its language (at least not for me), but beautiful in how sensory details and description mingle with the pov character's emotions to create this very specific moment in time. it's purple and melodramatic because the pov character is melodramatic:
"'Sorry, darling,' said Nick, and vamped through a few seconds of what they called Waldorf music before getting up and wandering out on to the balcony. They had only just started calling each other darling, and it seemed a nice part of the larger conspiracy of life at Kensington Park Gardens; but outside in the cool of the night Nick felt he was play-acting, and that Catherine was frighteningly strange to him. Her mirage of the beautiful poisonous universe shimmered before him again for a moment, but he couldn't hold it, and it slipped quickly away.
There was a supper party in a nearby back garden, and the talk and light clatter carried on the still air. A man called Geoffrey was making everyone laugh, and the women kept calling out his name in excited protest between the semi-audible paragraphs of his story. Out in the communal gardens someone was walking a small white dog, which looked almost luminous as it bobbed and scampered in the late dusk. Above the trees and rooftops the dingy glare of the London sky faded upwards into weak violet heights. In summer, when windows everywhere were open, night seemed made of sound as much as shadow, the whisper of the leaves, the unsleeping traffic rumble, far-off car horns and squeals of brakes; voices, faint shouts, a waveband twiddle of unconnected music. Nick yearned for Leo, away to the north, three miles up the long straight roads, but possibly anywhere, moving with invisible speed on his silver bike. He wondered again in which park the photo of him had been taken; and of course what person, routinely intimate with Leo, had taken it. He felt hollow with frustration and delay. The girl with the white dog came back along the gravel path, and he thought how he might appear to her, if she glanced up, as an enviable figure, poised against the shining accomplished background of the lamplit room. Whereas, looking out, leaning out over the iron railing, Nick felt he had been swept to the brink of some new promise, a scented vista or vision of the night, and then held there."
Thanks for the video! 🥰
oh MY that's a gorgeous passage. thank you for putting this book on my radar!
Wonderful video! I love imagery and powerful prose. I think purple prose is really dependent on the writer and their style, so sometimes it can work in their favor. I absolutely LOVE your excerpts! You’re an incredible writer. I’m in awe.
This is an excerpt from a short story I wrote in an anthology that’s being traditionally published this year. This excerpt was cut because it was more supernatural than thriller (my story is a YA thriller). I still love the passage. It’s a bit flowery, though!
I never thought about it in all the times I've been up here previously with Nova, but now, the shadows are expanding around me; I feel outnumbered by them. As if I've already lingered here too long and am encroaching on their sacred space. I swear they bend toward me.
Waiting.
I'm a new writer of short fiction. Moments ago, I asked my wife to beta-read a story I've begun. She has a degree in English and writes creatively also. I'm a fan of Ralph Ellison and Dumas and my writing style reflects this. I didn't know that "purple prose" was frowned upon by literary critics. My wife wasted no time to tell me that my writing was too flowery, and I was slightly discouraged until I watched your video.
I'd like to share the first paragraph of my story as an example of "purple prose" that I love.
"Beauty is obviously beautiful, as is, ugly moans under the veil. I found this reflection over the bluest sigh. Finding more than myself in this crooked mirror, I stood, then leaned over each thought in a drunken stance with both hands clasping a dirty sink. I held on to keep from draining away while the rhythm of the room swayed as a fleet of sails in open waters. But this is no vacation on Pompano Beach. It’s the night before my flight home to Bedford Hills. The flickering bulb above me casted a shadow that followed each swig of the flask. The son of Buster Davis couldn’t hack it in the place where dreams unfold."
That was insanely good. I consider purple prose something which lacks clarity in conveying its ideas. Your writing is not purple. It is clear as a crystal. Ignore your wife. Continue writing.
A lot of it comes down to knowing what YOU like. Even within "genre fiction", there are writers known for elevated prose. Patrick Rothfuss comes to mind, though I haven't read his work first-hand so don't hold me to that. Readers who resonate with your work will love it and the people who resent any vocabulary above 5th grade level will call it purple. Writers have to please themselves first, just like any artist.
Also people that say you shouldn't care about prose are wild. We are WRITERS, words are kind of important to our craft.
personal taste is huge, i agree!
I would love to see a video about POVs. What are your favorites to write in and why do you pick a certain POV depending on the story structure? If that makes sense.
I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot lately too!
Oh, what a relief, we agree on this after all!
'Does it make sense' is honestly at the core of it all for me. If the character, world and style can accommodate a somewhat flowery expression of a thought, the limit is at a different spot than for something quicker and more curt in tone. But even inside both realms, there's a lot of room.
Exercises in simply condensing passages down have been very helpful to me. But I would always approach that from the angle of making the text *prettier* (like poetry!) rather than just making it 'simpler' or 'shorter' - exactly what you say about just strengthening the message.
yes! this is how I approach editing too :)
I used to be SPOOKED by flowery writing. When I started learning what prose actually WAS, I was certain I wanted it to be clear, window-pane. But I've become less stuck up about it, and found great joy in precise word choice and metaphors that harken to worldbuilding or character bias. I'm happy going along a slow, even pace writing so long as it gives me time to enjoy the sentences I'm writing. It's fun how being looser can lead to more careful writing, if that makes sense?
But, yeah, I COMPLETELY related to it feeling like a problem-solving exercise. It's the best. Finding the perfect verb has been my new favorite hobby, I swear.
omg i *love* verb-hunting
great example of self-editing at the end there! Loved the revised version. You are a talented writer!
Thank you for this video. I'm a new fiction writer. Videos like this are the college course in fiction writing I never took. This purple prose thing is an area I struggle with quite a bit.
A novel is whole different animal from non-fiction. It's art, as opposed to writing instruction manuals.
A favorite quote of what I consider great prose is this one, from Intensity, by Dean Koontz: "She was not defined either by a name or by shameful experience; instead she was formed by dreams and hopes, by aspirations, by self-respect and perseverance. She wasn't clay in the hands of others; she was rock and with her own determined hands, she could sculpt the person that she wanted to be."
That quoted passage isn't purple in my opinion. It's very specific and very clear that it's describing a woman's confidence and independence, and a very precise type of independence and confidence since those concepts can be somewhat ambiguous.
Above all else, what I consider purple prose is ambiguous and lacking in specificity. It's vague prose, like a poem open to widely different interpretations. It's not merely the use of figurative language or abstract ideas, but specifically using such things to write something very vague.
really good video. i appreciate the f scott breakdown. that is a crazy segment. i dug it
I loved this video and conversation :) My writing journey started from poetry and I didn't get into fiction until a few years ago so I naturally have an over flowery style. For me, it's all about emotion and communicating something beyond the basic information in a way that makes a person feel. At face value, the advice of don't try too hard is frustrating because it throws out the idea of prose being useful and worthy. But I think finding the right balance of prose and informative storytelling takes practice. Like you, I adore Fitzgerald's work, I think it's beautiful. I'm currently reading the Bell Jar and the way Plath describes simple things like setting is what puts you in the characters head and how they perceive it. Storytelling is kind of a science, but prose, creative ideas, and personal style is what makes writing an art. Diverse writing is a part of what makes reading so enjoyable.
such a good video ☺️✨
I always thought of purple prose as the type of writing that leans heavily on adjectives to describe something, and descriptions of things that don't matter in the grand scheme of the story. The "she picked up the chilly, silvery fork with tiny roses at the top and ate a bite of pasta" kind of writing. I remember reading The Maze Runner with friends and we DNF because of purple prose. I'd never looked up the popular definition for it and didn't associate flowery, heavy metaphorical writing with it. Purple prose, to me, was the writing equivalent of starting too close to the canvas and becoming too wrapped up in the final details. Never was it a warning away from Flower/Poetic writing altogether.
I'm a fan of straight forward, gut-punchy writing: "Appleton wore the tragedy of the last 24 hours with the self-satisfied anger of someone who'd been wanting an excuse for a while." is a line that has lived in my head for half a year. It doesn't stay rent free, I pay it.
But I think that when a story can successfully do both. When it lets you sink in and wade through the characters thoughts, before hitting you with a cold one-two, those are the stories that can really make an impression. A painted picture and the nail to hang it on the wall.
I agree, I live for the stories that earn their one-liners, metaphors, wonderful imagery. I just keep seeing some readers/writers conflate "purple prose" with all "flowery" writing!
I'm actually towards the opposite taste. Purple prose to me is prose that steps too far away from the metaphorical canvas in its descriptions, and delves deeply into the abstract over the concrete. Tolkien's writing is an example to me:
>> The great shadow descended like a falling cloud. And behold! it was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was, whose kind, lingering in forgotten mountains cold beneath the Moon, outstayed their day, and in hideous eyrie bred this last untimely brood, apt to evil.
So the fell beast is _maybe_ a naked bird, and the passage really emphasizes how bird-like it is even though it may or may not be a bird by saying it lacks both feathers and quills of a feather (really sticking to the naked bird theme, even though it might not be a bird), and it's simply described as stinky without even describing how it's stinky (does it smell like garbage, like a rotting carcass, like smelly socks, cheese, what?). It's _maybe_ of an older world (this is quite the unreliable narrator). And it's described as "apt to evil" (oh wait, suddenly the narrator is omniscient again, or is this still bundled into the conjecture of "maybes"?) -- how? The webs of hide and horned fingers almost sound like a bat, except the bulk of the passage focuses on a bird theme instead of a bat theme, so it's probably not bat-like, even though it sounds bat-like. Does it have a beak? Does it look like a naked vulture? A naked eagle? A naked owl? A naked duck?
It's also clearly contorted to forcefully use poetic devices. Using "neither quill nor feather did it bear" was almost certainly chosen for the assonance of "feather" and "bear" [ˈnaɪðər kwɪl nɔr ˈfɛðər dɪd ɪt bɛr], but that's completely bassackwards to mention the absence of quills on a bird-like creature before the absence of feathers. That's like saying, "the man had neither legs nor feet to retreat."
It's very abstract and not very evocative unless we're especially imaginative and eager to fill in so many blanks. It's largely devoid of concrete details. Tolkien paints with a very broad brush and creates a world of epic scale, but it never came across to me as particularly sensual or detailed for my tastes so a lot of the descriptions seem like poetic infodumps that slow me down as a reader with all of the abstraction, drawing maximum attention to the writing style and individual word choices. When I have to work almost as hard to imagine and sense what the author is describing in prose as I do to interpret the meaning of complex poetry, that's when prose becomes purple for me; it has absolutely nothing to do with adjectives and adverbs in my case.
Meanwhile, if I compare Nicholson Baker's writing:
>> At some earlier point in the morning, my left shoe had become untied, and as I had sat at my desk working on a memo, my foot had sensed its potential freedom and slipped out of the sauna of black cordovan to soothe itself with rhythmic movements over an area of wall-to-wall carpeting under my desk, which, unlike the tamped-down areas of public traffic, was still almost as soft and fibrous as it had been when first installed.
>> I liked to be able to slap my hand fondly down on the top of a green mailmen-only mailbox, or bounce my fist lightly against the steel support for the traffic lights, both because the pleasure of touching these cold, dusty surfaces with the springy muscle on the side of my palm was intrinsically good, and because I liked other people to see me as a guy in a tie yet carefree and casual enough to be doing what kids do when they drag a stick over the black uprights of a cast-iron fence.
... that's extremely evocative. I don't consider it purple despite his liberal use of adjectives and adverbs, since he's focusing on very concrete ideas to paint the clearest of images.
Cat Valente writes some of my favorite adjective-heavy prose. I don't think it's an accident that she comes from a poetry background, so while there's a lot going on in her writing, it's all so purposeful and so beautiful. I'm in awe every time I read her work.
I'm definitely more tolerant of "purpleness" than most people, but I agree that you have to make sure the writing is actually doing what you want it to. Steering the Craft by Ursula K Le Guin is a book that has helped me a lot when thinking about writing intentional (sometimes purple) prose.
thanks for the recommendations! gonna check these out :)
KRIS I LOVED THIS VIDEO!! 🌸 I definitely fall into the camp where I think my sentences could not make sense? I think I overuse metaphors, and extended metaphors. They sense to me... but do they? To others?? LOL And also at the same time, poetry uses a lot of extended metaphors, and those could lack clarity, but I think sometimes they are vague intentionally? If that makes sense?? Hehe. I liked the quotes you read from Gatsby, and I didn't think someone would call them purple prose. They were so beautifully written! My favorite "flowery" writing is from Oscar Wilde. I've always liked the first sentence of the first chapter of Picutre of Dorian Gray🥺
"The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn." 🌷
Talk about flowery yes indeeeedy😁🌻🌹🌺🌼💐
thanks Kelley💛💛 you just reminded me i gotta read more poetry!!
eeee such a great topic kris! honestly sometimes i also deal with low self esteem when it comes to my writing STYLE. sometimes i cringe at the way i describe things but sometimes i am wowed by it. it’s a constant battle, practicing your style, and leaning into your own originality when so much advice - and even the books we read - shape the way we write.
it’s a balancing act, and that’s what makes good writing SO good.
YES I am cringing constantly when I write but once you figure out how the words are meant to work together, it's 100% worth it :') 💛
I've got to steel myself now before I even start, I'm a true sufferer of Tolkien Syndrome, this'll be a rough one... 😂
I also Stan purple prose. Laini Taylor and Roshani Chokshi are the masters. However, they use it with purpose. It’s not just simply their style. It’s integral to their story telling.
My family has always told me I write too flowery and I take it as a compliment.