Almost every successful writer is guilty of doing it, Faulkner especially. I’m starting to think that lit critics are hypocritical homosexuals who simply choose whom they like based on whom their father and professors liked
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>no purple prose
>show don't tell
>write what you know
all of this is bullshit is taught to braindead MFA women who end up writing syphilitic sex diaries and harry potter rip-off #27688
pick 5 authors you love and then experiment, combine, emulate prose until you develop your own style
disregard writing rules and critics, and women most of all (not just in writing)
You don't know what purple prose is.
Those are things taught in highschool creative writing so the teachers do not have to suffer as much. You have no clue about what an MFA entails and are likely very insecure.
I have MFA lmao
When did they start offering an MFA for moron?
>I have Massive homosexual AIDS
>I have Massive homosexual Autoimmune Deficiency Syndrome.
You have MFADS?
>You don't know what purple prose is.
This.
Tangentially, I absolutely fricking how often adverbs are abused in modern writing (especially marketing and """journalism"""), usually as a way to tell you how you're supposed to feel about what they're saying.
>startlingly effective
>shockingly large
>depressingly often
>absolutely fricking hate
yeah I'm not applying good writing practices here and typo and shit. I still hate adverb-abusing journalists even if it doesn't technically count as purple prose.
Then define purple prose with an example included.
>define purple prose with an example included.
You first. Or else stop making gay OPs about shit you don't really understand.
Purple Prose requires some level of subjective assessment, meaning there will be some edge-cases and disputes that can never be resolved. This makes the topic very hard for brainlets to cope with and reason about.
mostly covers it but I would add (more elaborate since he did imply this) that it very often is picking words without considering meaning or oversimplifying meaning, the view that an adverb or adjective is a word which modifies another word when it really is the collection of ideas those words represent modifying each other's meaning. Everytime you use an adjective or adverb you are suggesting all of those meanings and possible ways they can interact with their noun or verb and when you use a great many carelessly you create needless ambiguity. The reader needs to question if your allusions are purposeful or just ignorance and this gets tiring.
>example
Not a direct example but I think it demonstrates the issues quite well, the importance of word choice and understanding the words you use in all of their meanings.
>Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
I don't have much energy for this tired debate which you have put no effort into understanding, just made the assumption of understanding, and really it should be on you to define the term and you should have included that in OP.
moron
Because it makes reading rhythmic and fun. If your point is relativity and communication as an author, I guess avoid it but what really is peoples' problem with it?
By purple prose do you just mean dense, lyrical, image-heavy writing?
In that case, there of course wouldn't be anything wrong with it in the abstract, but I think people generally use it to instead mean prose that doesn't really know what it's trying to say and covers up the lack of focus with flashy, beguiling ornament.
That's obviously a real problem and it's useful to have a term for it, but it doesn't seem like a very apt description of Faulkner, who always seems to be emphatically trying to get at something very specific, if subtle.
It's nice, when reading, for instance, Faulkner, to feel that the words have been chosen carefully, and work together in concert; it's depressing and frustrating to feel that words have been chucked together thoughtlessly just because the writer wanted to sound superficially impressive. Sometimes it can be hard to articulate why a text falls on one side of that line and not the other, or even to know which side it should fall on, but that doesn't mean the line is purely arbitrary.
Faulkner is the definition of purple prose. There is no justfication for 4 fricking modifiers for one subject. That's not subtle. That's just the writer being melodramatic about his setting.
Or maybe he's just speaking through the mouths of his characters, which he does a lot.
If the character is a pretentious prick, expect purple prose. And quite right too.
Because every hillbilly hick uses words like inviolate and abrogate right?
Seething cuck.
>t. dyel yankee from some mediocre school like Oberlin
moron
Purple prose is the literary equivalent of pic related, right side. homosexuals will do mental gymnastics to convince people otherwise, but its true.
Faulkner's best writing is his least flowery. Same with Joyce, same with McCarthy.
frick
>purple
>prolix
Evil is excess -- it's about what you can justify. Simile's have to be earned, for instance. What we're talking about is arhythmic and 'tone deaf' musicality, where baroque is giving over to rococo in a shell game of erudition treading water over a pearl rather than diving down and taking it. An author obviously peawienering breaks verisimilitude and turns any character into their exposition puppet, an instrument rather than an person and entity with a separate and distinct life of its own.
Selfie-photobombing the composition is apt.
Post example from Faulkner or shut the frick up.
Read Faulkner and then read Wheel of Time or Perdido Street Station and you'll see the difference between lyrical writing and purple prose.
Purple prose is bad by definition. You might say that a lot of writing labelled as "purple prose" actually isn't, and I wouldn't disagree with you.
For example, I think "It was a dark and stormy night..." is a fine opening sentence. It wears its heart on its sleeve and doesn't take itself too seriously. If I were stuck in a room for a day with Paul Clifford and Normal People, it wouldn't be Sally I read.
I managed to write 140 pages in my novel without a single hint of purple prose, but a couple days ago, I dipped my toe for a scene I felt lacked emotion and I've felt like a talentless, sentimental homosexual ever since. It's not worth it, bros.
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
>It was a greasy and oily night; the cum fell in buckets—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in Dallas that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the laptops that struggled against the darkness.
purple prose is a problem because it's purple from me beating the frick out of it
Or are you beating to it? 😉
What people call purple prose is just bad prose trying to be good prose. Nothing's wrong with writing ornately. If you spend two paragraphs describing a pretty sunset in every last sparkling detail that's just trite and unmotivating.
>that's just trite and unmotivating.
OH IS IT? Show us your prose then, Mr. Highbrow?