And Let Me Guide You To The Purple Prose

Last week I wrote about Romance Author Rebecca Brandewyn's rather, uh, odd assertion that purple prose has gone the way of the big reptiles because of paper costs and that, in truth, purple prose and over writing are simply the victims of this and should be brought back out of retirement like Sugar Ray Leonard. Well, today a reader emailed to inform me that Ms. Brandewyn has continued her rant in favor of purple prose on her own blog:

Let me give you some contrasts. Let’s use the sentence "The dog begged for a bone." That’s clean and sparse, yes. But what, exactly, does that tell me as a reader? Well, not much. I don’t know all the things I want to know: what the dog looks like, its gender, why it’s begging for the bone, whether it’s happy or excited, etc. Maybe I’ll get additional information from the story’s context, but then again, maybe I won’t. Changing the sentence to "The flop-earred dog sadly begged for a bone" begins to put me on the right track, perhaps, by giving me a little more information, but again, not much. For all I know, I may going down the wrong path entirely. This dog may be sad merely because it's greedy, already stuffed full of treats, and disappointed at not getting still more, despite all its conniving. But what if we change the sentence to "After fetching his master’s slippers, the flop-earred dog begged for a bone, his sleek red forehead wrinkled with sadness, his dark brown eyes anxious at the thought that, instead, he would receive a sharp word and an even sharper kick, as usual." Well, then, I don’t need any more information from the story’s context to know that: this dog is male; his fur’s not fluffy but sleek; that in addition to floppy ears, he’s got a red forehead and loose skin that’s capable of wrinkling, brown eyes, and that, sadly, despite the fact that he’s clearly intelligent and obedient enough to fetch his master’s slippers, instead of being praised and rewarded, he’s regularly denied treats and abused. As a reader, which sentence made the dog come alive for you? I know which one worked for me. Based on a single sentence, I've already personalized this last poor dog and feel very sorry for him.

You know what I feel for the dog? I feel like I want to take a pick-axe to the blog he's living in, thus freeing him from a life of cliched writing and over-wrought emoting. Live with me, dog, and you can lick your butt all day and chase tennis balls all night without ever worrying about excess adverbs and hollow descriptions muddying up your existence. This sentence -- "After fetching his master’s slippers, the flop-earred dog begged for a bone, his sleek red forehead wrinkled with sadness, his dark brown eyes anxious at the thought that, instead, he would receive a sharp word and an even sharper kick, as usual." -- isn't merely an example of purple prose, it's an example of bad writing in the most mundane way: it makes the reader feel like the writer believes he or she is a moron (I may well be a moron, but I don't want to be told that by an author). Interestingly, Ms. Brandewyn is no longer asserting (at least not in this post) that purple prose has died because of the Evil Paper Cost Cabal.

Again, I'm all for lush descriptions, vivid details and interesting insights. Hell, I even try to write them now and again myself. But that ain't it.

Comments

[aaron]

Oh, dear God. That sentence is horrendous. I would so so SO much rather read "The dog begged for a bone."

[Sarah]

Me too -- besides, can't you use OTHER sentences to describe the scene, setting, what the dog looks like?

Why write a sentence as if it's the last one you'll ever write?

[Jimmy Beck]

it was a dark and stormy bone

[Victor Gischler]

The dog -- beaten, disgraced, at the end of his rope, humiliated, his floppy ears flapping in the cold, bitter wind -- begged for the rotten, fetid bone.

Victor

Movie producer: "Does it have to be a bone?"

[Anea]

The reader, innundated with descriptives and wishing that the author would shut up, throws the blog dog against the wall and gives her own dog a bone.

[Stephen]

Bulwer-Lytton, anyone?

[aaron]

did you mean:

The tired-eyed reader, innundated with overflowered and unnecessary descriptives and wishing with all her might that the blowhard, vomit-causing at the worst, eye-roll-inducing at the least author would just please please shut up, mightily throws the exhausted-from-too-many-descriptions blog dog against the cold, hard, white wall and gives her own well taken care of dog a tasty bone, for reward.

?

[Anea]

Yes, thank you Aaron, that is EXACTLY what I meant :)

[Adam]

Setting aside the virtue of the sentence itself, I wonder why Ms. Brandewyn considers the dog so vital. Yes, if the floppy-earedness of the dog is important in the story, not to mention the gender and coat and emotional-status-of-forehead, the writer must establish these things; if not, then this is not a description but a distraction ... even if well-written.

The dog comes alives. Assume this is true: so what? The dog need only come alive if the dog matters, there's no reason to personalize every silly bitch begging for a bone.

[Angela Stubbs]

One boney night . . .

If the dog and the bone are central in the story and without it, the reader is lost--then fine. Otherwise, the rest is just superflous and garrolous crap.

[Anea]

"There is no reason to personalize every silly bitch begging for a bone"... I think i will have to make that into a t-shirt.

[The Evil J Winter]

The worst purple prose I'd ever seen was written by Star Trek novelist Diane Carey. In one novel, she wrote for pages and pages about how different a new colony was from Earth which had "mountains flushed as though kissed."

Do mountains flush? When they're kissed? If they keep running, do you jiggle them? Now there's an image. Jiggling mountains, probably not seen often in Los Angeles, what with all the silicon deposits.

[Kelley Bell]

Is she perhaps talking about this dog:

http://familylane.blogspot.com/2005/05/grace-our-german-shepherd-who-is.html

[Jae Baeli]

Oh don't get me started!
This post and the comments made me howl. Intelligent writers are always so entertaining. Thanks so much to all of you for giving me a light shining in a dark place....

I must share with you all the blog entry i just made today about this very author....

http://usedbythemuse.blogspot.com/2008/04/romancing-drone.html

Fondly,
Jae Baeli
http://SynapticCircus.blogspot.com
http://jaebaeli.com