pur·ple prose
Noun:
Prose that is too elaborate or ornate.

Sometimes, when I've been reading and writing, people have commented that someone's writing was purple. Knowing that to mean they consider the prose too complicated, I decided to make this thread in order to discuss what words we think are purple/excessive/voluptuous/tedious/complicated.

I'll start with some words that I restrain my use of....

Cascade (Fall)
Erroneous (Wrong)
Vermillion (Vivid red/orange)

694104
Well, it's not that a word is too elaborate, I think. It's that the work is oversaturated with those words. Plus, I don't consider cascade to be tedious at all, and erroneous doesn't seem too bad either.

Purple prose is the best... but only if its used correctly, good old Lovecraft did have a way with it which certainly made his work more invokative.

some consider these to be PP words:
-Cerulean
-Chelonian
-Chitinous
-Chthonic
etc

694104>>694121
I have to agree, it's not words so much as structure. Usually it's when a work takes far too long to get across a simple idea. Having a character speak for three paragraphs in order to tell someone that he is hungry would be purple prose.

Its when you start using those overly flamboyant words to the detraction of the story as a whole, causing a scene to drag on and on. Rather than any words being problematic on their own, it's more a constant dragging out of a scene to make the write seem smarter.

Good rule of thumb: if it takes you more than a full paragraph to describe something that should take half a sentence, try again.

Oh boy, I remember reading a story that took five paragraphs just describing someone eating breakfast.

If you find yourself needing constant help from this list you might want to look out for purple prose. :P

Yes that would be rather excessive use of PP, I generally keep my purple prose for important events in the storyline rather than upon mundanities of life, generally a measure to make the event more vivid and powerful, but general stuff I just keep low key in PP. As I said it can be good if you keep it to specific portions of the work, but don't overdo it otherwise it reads terribly.

694155

I once read a non-pony story that spent five pages describing someone being bored and looking out the window.

I hate purple prose. It's so last season. Everything's green now.

694167 Never used that list, didn't even know it existed.

694177 What about the use of complicated words during action scenes, like a fight between two characters? Is that a good high point to crack open the unused wings of the English lexicon?

I worry a lot about falling into this, but sometimes big, fancy words are the only way to express an abstract, elliptical, or many-faceted idea without sounding like the transcript of a dorm room conversation. Big words and complex, self-referential sentences really let you compress things and keep the story moving while still not letting various nuances slip by.
It only becomes a problem, I think, when an author starts using elaborate words just to prove that s/he knows them, instead of for the specific connotations they might bring to the sentence, or to avoid monotony.
So it's good to add balance with short, declarative sentences. Whatever works.

Purple Prose is more describing things unnecessarily. Higher language, yes. But you can be purple and simple at the same time. The biggest sin is description, usually settings, which are large and beautiful (supposedly) but ultimately pointless and dry.

Vermillion is a different shade of a color. I would say, if the word is a bit more elaborate BUT it makes the story more clear or signifies something important, it's better to say vermillion than red. For example. With how easy it is to search words these days, there's no excuse for readers not getting something.

Specific is good. Cluttered and confusing is bad.

PurpleProse is also an author.

694539
Sorry, SS&E fills my quota of Purple Prose.

I do not mind flowery language and long words if the author is fit to use them. In fact, I prefer classical, long-form novel language to casual story-telling. However, if an author uses them too much for their own good or improperly, the writing becomes tortured.

694566
SS&E

694579
Short Skirts and Explosions
Author of Background Pony

694131 Chitinous? Purple?
How would you describe an exoskeleton made from a sugar molecule called chitin, then?

Very few words are too fancy if they are Twilight's thoughts, perceptions (IE she is the POV character, especially if it is a 1st person POV story), or words.

Ditto for Luna, and perhaps Celestia (Although usually not when speaking), depending on how much you want to play up her intelligence and/or learning.

Rarity among the Social Elite might scale up her vocabulary even more than she already does.

Beyond that... I believe in expanding my reader's vocabularies rather than limiting what words flow naturally from me. To the point that I include hyperlinks to the more obscure words and concepts. The show is stealth education for children** and I see no reason the fanfic shouldn't be mind-expanding. This isn't to say that using a big word for the sake of using a big word is always desirable, but one should, at the least, write as comes naturally to one.

*Did you know that there are giant amoebae in the deepest parts of the ocean IRL?... neither did I until I was researching a scene set in the Mareianas(sic) Trench.
**And sometimes for adults... see the villain in "Read It and Weep", which isn't common knowledge. I only knew of him from the "Irrational Fears" webcomic before that.

Really, the individual words are fine so long as they're used properly. Not that long ago I used the word neophyte simply because it conveys a very specific double meaning. Purple prose is more making things over-flowery to the point of being pretentious. IE...

Consciousness stole over the lavender equine, ushering upon her the glory of another turn of her albaster mentor's diurnal triumph of the cerulean heavens. Opening wide the amethyst mirrors of her soul upon the brilliant amber columns of Helios' light that streamed through the panes that her still-verdant home embraced, she basked in the heady flush of her mentor's love made manifest in the ether. Etc.

This is worth a read on this topic, and also hilarious:
Slate - Amanda McKittrick Ros, the Worst Novelist in History

One thing that is clear about Ros’ prose is its aversion to calling a thing by its name. Eyes are “globes of glare.” When their owners are unhappy, these globes are “stuffed with sorrow.” Trousers are not trousers; they are “the southern necessary.” It’s as if, for Ros, circumlocution and literature are essentially synonymous. When a near-destitute Oscar is forced to take up work as a schoolteacher in America, he is quickly “compelled to resign through courting too great love for the all-powerful monster of mangled might”—by which she means, naturally, “Intemperance.” And then there’s this extraordinary sentence about the eponymous heroine of her second novel, Delina Delaney: “She tried hard to keep herself a stranger to her poor old father's slight income by the use of the finest production of steel, whose blunt edge eyed the reely covering with marked greed, and offered its sharp dart to faultless fabrics of flaxen fineness.” (That is, Delina did some work as a seamstress so she wouldn’t have to live off her father.)

To reiterate a point that was made earlier in the thread, purple prose is not (primarily) about word choice, it's about structure. Note also that purple prose is very much in the eye of the beholder, so your mileage may vary with any advice on the subject.

Prose gets purple when you are piling up words instead of just coming out and saying what you mean to say. You don't need five adjectives and three adverbs when you are describing the way the light falls through the window. You don't need to spend 200 words describing a character (including compound adjectives for each of their features, of course). You don't need to write a dissertation on the way your character leaves a room. Get to the damn point, and your prose won't be purple.

Descriptions can be vivid and evocative without needing shovelfuls of words. That is part of the art of writing, and is a skill which can—and should—be developed.

To touch on word choice for a moment: many people say that vocabulary makes prose purple. I disagree, to an extent. Using ten-dollar words is fine, when they're the right words for the job. Part of this is characterization—if you are writing for a character with a large vocabulary, then choosing less common and more precise words can be appropriate. Twilight might look at an object and recognize that it is an astrolabe, and she may well even know the technical terms for its various parts. If Scootaloo looks at that same object and thinks, "oh, that's an astrolabe," then you're writing her out of character (unless there's a plot-related reason she would know that, of course). It's similar to saying that someone is "livid" instead of "very, very angry." If livid is the word which best describes their emotional state, then use it.

Purple word choice comes from using ten-dollar words for the sake of using ten-dollar words. Throwing every fancy word you (or your dictionary) know into a sentence is essentially always a bad idea, unless you are writing a character who is a blowhard.

In summary, avoiding purple prose is as easy as following one of the basic guidelines for writing: "Keep It Simple, Stupid." Say what needs to be said and get out. Your writing will pack more punch, and no one will ever accuse you of being purple.

Some people have mentioned Lovecraft, and purple prose would be an accurate label for him... But his stories are very different from most. He's not much for characters or action, really. His stories pretty much rely on trying to describe things beyond the realm of human comprehension. It's very surreal.

Most stories are about characters and action, though, so you want to keep things clear. Your readers didn't come to see how many big words you know. They came to find out who your characters are and what happens to them.

Purple prose is vile, and its probably where most writers, especially fanfiction writers, go wrong. A lot of young writers look at what has been deemed classical literature, and they notice how wordy it is, and they draw the obvious parallel: wordy = good. Not so. I believe there's no reason to say in twenty words what you can say in ten. For my money, the best writing is modern writing that gets the point across quickly and doesn't feel it necessary to fill in every blank. Read Slaughterhouse Five for a really good example.

695451
Also, Lovecraft was very skilled at building tension, which is something most "purple" writers fail at.

I read a story once in which the writing style was so over-elaborate that I couldn't understand it, and I ended up re-reading every paragraph. Three times.

The original James Bond novels by Sir Ian Fleming are a good example of "Purple prose". While the stories are very good overall, there are sections that go a bit overboard with the descriptive language.

I agree with most of the other people on this thread; it's not the words you use, it's how you use them.

696164 I'm surprised you stayed with it, then.

694302

probably not, fights are fast situations, it would come across as highly unrealistic, I mean your hardly going to be wondering how the sanguine blood of your opponent reminds you of a crimson sunset amongst a field of roses (albeit in a more flowery prose), your going to be wondering about how to kill your opponent. the distinguishable change in your language would impress upon the reader that they are dealing with a real brutal threat and build the seriousness of the situation, flowery prose will either bore the reader of drag out the fight scene to disproportionate lengths.

purple prose works best when discribing things such as Eldritch abominations, buildings, awesome scenery, important items, particularly magnificent looking character, or an epic highly developed use of power (for example it might be good to use it for watching Celestia raising the sun). Just keep it for describing things which are actually important to the plot, not every pony, post office or field you care to mention. you can use it for other things, but it works best in descriptions of things.

694721

I wasn't saying that I wouldn't use Chitinous, I am a fan of Purple Prose, I guess you could say it was "shelled" or "insectoid" or was covered in a "carapace" which would give the same idea.

694459
I like what you did here. High five to you!

696379 But it isn't the same sugar molecule! I wanna my n-acetylglucosamine beta-linked back! Give it back!

695451 Hence why I couldn't get past chapter 5 of The End of Ponies... or chapter 3 of Background Pony. Still- the idea is very solid and the story doesn't disappoint, from what I've heard.

I think there is a difference between purple prose and words that aren't the best choice in most situations.

For instance, I dislike (strongly) the use of the word cyan to describe color. The reason is that I've never once heard someone use it is real life. Once I don't mind, but when it occurs again and again, then it really grates on my nerves. One does not always need to describe a shade of color with maximum accuracy every time, after all.

However, a person doing so is not guilty of purple prose in my book. I see purple prose as being those situations where an author is consistently using vocabulary which a) is almost indecipherable without a dictionary and b) which actually impedes the flow of the story. I think using big words is a good thing. However, ones choice in vocabulary should not actually harm the story. When the reader is put off by an indecipherable paragraph (or twenty), then the author has failed the reader.

Purple prose is about excess with no purpose but to feed an authors ego or low self-esteem. An advanced vocabulary is great - a person who just tries to find the longest synonym to every word is being a twit.

696302
I don't know that I could return to Ian Fleming. I read his books when I was younger, and REALLY into James Bond, and I found them dull then.

697248

The word "cyan" gets used a lot by graphic designers, but I think that's about it. At some point someone decided to describe Rainbow Dash using that color and for some reason it stuck.

Plus there's no reason to tell us what color the main characters of the show are, or any other basic details of their appearance. It's assumed that anyone reading a My Little Pony fanfiction should be familiar with them. Still, that only goes into "unnecessary description" and not really purple prose, unless someone's really gone overboard with it.

698099

Exactly. It's something I don't like personally, but its definetly not purple prose. Neither is using an advanced/adult vocabulary. But when the vocabulary and descriptive phrases begin to hinder the story, then it does become purple prose. An author can be excused for using excessive detail every now and again, but when it becomes somethng to be overcome by the reader, well, then it becomes a true problem.

I have never been one to agree with the misuse Purple Prose. It is an entirely subjective thing. A large portion of people have a tendency (or so I have noticed) to claim Purple Prose just because the author used one too many polysyllabic words.

I play lots of fantasy games, so chitin and its derivatives are pretty common place to me. So are many other words. I had cerulean crayons when I was growing up (labeled cerulean). Water doesn't fall down the waterfall, it cascades.

I also read a lot, so I tend to come across words that I don't use every day, but I can generally get the idea of their definition by examining the context that they are used in.

The real menace behind purple prose is when authors go out of their way to use a word that is recherche and that is completely beyond them, like recherche.

As a general rule of thumb, if you look up a synonym of a word, do not use a synonym if you do not know what that word means... like recherche. (Especially if you don't even know how to pronounce the word)

Rechurch? Recherk? Rechairch?

Edit: It is pronounced, reh-share-shay

695206

To reiterate a point that was made earlier in the thread, purple prose is not (primarily) about word choice, it's about structure. Note also that purple prose is very much in the eye of the beholder, so your mileage may vary with any advice on the subject.

Indeed. Well stated.

698099

I see purple prose as being those situations where an author is consistently using vocabulary which a) is almost indecipherable without a dictionary and b) which actually impedes the flow of the story. I think using big words is a good thing. However, ones choice in vocabulary should not actually harm the story. When the reader is put off by an indecipherable paragraph (or twenty), then the author has failed the reader.

An author crafts a story with words, and the choice of the correct words is vital to the life of the story. An author should try to be both precise and economical. Using words that have more exact or elaborate meanings allow the writer to convey complex imagery in with a minimum of words. Using synonyms prevents word usage from becoming too repetitious (especially in longer works). Or allow differentiation between two similar objects. (For example: it may not often be necessary to use "cyan" rather than the more generic "blue", but it definitely comes in useful when you are going to be describing and keeping distinct characters in a world of colorful ponies... especially in a Wonderbolts Academy scene where you might have several pegasus mares who are different variations of blue.)

Depending on fields of study, levels of education and general age, authors will have significantly different vocabularies. An author must be careful not to use more complex words just for the sake of using them, or to used them excessively at the cost of the story. But likewise, they should not feel pressured to "dumb down" their writing because some (usually younger) readers are crying "purple prose" because they are reading words outside their common vocabulary.

To help clarify, I leave you with this example of what "purple prose" really means. This is a passage from the (yes, published) novel Silk & Steel in which the author describes a naked woman. This takes over two pages...

She was like... bottles of wine, covered with dew, and otters. Yes, otters.

Meh. Sometimes you can let a sentence speak for itself.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/56247/2/of-olden-times-long-past-an-introverts-perspective/from-shadows-to-darkness
For example: "Ohh, but you will love my deft and nimble hoof in your cleft."
If you wish, read the chapter to get an idea where I am going with this.

To me, subtlety is the hard part to master. Sometimes, the results should speak for themselves.