Beige Prose Vs. Purple Prose

These two types of prose will pop up a lot in literature. Both of them definitely have an impact on the quality of writing in their own ways.

Purple Prose can be found in Splinter Of The Minds Eye and the first three The Bourne Series books as examples. There's a lot of flowery, fancy descriptions in them. However, several times I sit there and I'm having a hard time picturing the description made. Several times I find myself sitting there and wondering what that word even means, and I think I have even stopped reading just to look it up in a dictionary.

Is that Good Writing, to have your own reader interrupt the flow of the story just to try to find out what the blazes you wrote in there?

Then there's the book A Tale Of Two Cities. I believe someone said that if you cut out all the Purple Prose from the story, then you would have less than half the pages left over. Clearly, a number of stories use this type of prose as filler and nothing else. Filler sounds like Bad Writing to me. That's like trying to fill that high-school essay you're doing with nonsense just to make the minimum page requirement!

Finally, there's the Melodrama that comes with the Purple Prose. I don't mind melodrama now and then, but if it's cranked up too high, then it turns to Narm. The first three Jason Bourne books were entertaining, I can admit that! But in my opinion, the melodrama in those three books was cranked up so high that I found myself staring at a bunch of Narm!

At least the Jason Bourne books that came after, whatever their flaws, don't suffer from that problem! And it's all thanks to Beige Prose!

I prefer Beige Prose. Which prose do you prefer?

edited 21st Jan '12 6:00:20 AM by TiggersAreGreat

Oh, Equestria, we stand on guard for thee!

Purple Prose,Beige Prose makes the book go through too quickly,sort of like a movie that's too fast-paced

A good Purple Prose book such as The Hunger Games or The Lord Of The Rings can really build up a universe and get into the characters more. A bad one like The Inheritance Cycle,I can understand that but it's still better than poorly used Beige Prose such as all of Twilight not related to Edward (seriously she gives maybe a sentence about Forks and her father)

Beige Prose sucks

Depends on what I'm reading. Both of them work when done well, and used appropriately. Both of them suck when done badly or used inappropriately.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

This. I actually have a preference for Purple Prose, though.

Instead, I have learned a horrible truth of existence...some stories have no meaning.

I think both are good tropes, and that one isn't necessarily better or worse than the other, but that there are proper times in the story to favor one over the other.

Beige Prose works well if the author is aiming for a shallow feeling (i.e American Psycho for descriptions of clothing and dinner etc...) and Purple Prose is better for a feeling of complexity or detail.

Danger's over, Banana Breakfast is saved. FC: 0576 - 4632 - 1517

I am fairly sure that is not an example of purple prose.

I dislike books that are boring, but the books I've hated (Tale of Two Cities) have been Purple Prose.

Beige Prose is usually the default, I guess, while it takes effort to use purple. Thus, there are way many more ways for purple to go wrong than beige.

I think.

Read my stories!

The books I love the most tend to be purple prose and it tends to be what I generally prefer to read. It's awesome when it's done purposely bad as a fuck you to critics too.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

If I have to pick one, Purple Prose by far. Beige Prose just leaves me bored and disengaged from the story. Even if it is overdone I prefer something I can sink my teeth into.

Um. Purple prose is a pejorative term. It isn't something you 'prefer' - it's a (particularly egregious) stylistic flaw. If long-winded, obscurely-worded prose is done well - a lot of people would say that Dickens, for instance, falls under that category - then it stops being 'purple prose'...

"For though thy cannon shook the city-wall, My heart did never quake, nor courage faint."

Lovecraft is generally considered hideously fucking purple. This is how I prefer text to be written. Overly eloquent and filled with fancy, long words at the expense of readability. Well readability to others. I find it very breezy and easy!

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

I like the...visceral feel of a decent amount of purple prose. Though I think they each have their place, and that the inexperienced can easily muck them both up.

What's the frequency Kenneth?|In case of war.

Indeed. The inexperienced can muck up everything. Mucking things up is how you get places though.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Purple Prose, perhaps. Though bare bones can be interesting to look at, too, as proven by Cormac McCarthy and e e cummings alike.

There are those weird in-between examples, though, like Faulkner and Djuna Barnes. I love those.

edited 21st Jan '12 5:19:24 PM by JHM

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

Among less-experienced writers, it's often assumed that lots and lots of description will make whatever they're doing better.

zerky has read several fanfiction guides where the misguided writer will give advice about how to describe things using lots of adjectives and how to use the thesaurus*

. In one guide (that she has sadly forgotten the location of) the writer even suggested that you should describe things when the reader already knows exactly what they look like, and the object, thing, or person, is not exceptional in appearance or story weight in any way, because it "makes the story more colourful". Yes. Colourful indeed. But only one colour.

While having very elaborate descriptions and magniloquent prose aren't necessarily a mistake, Purple Prose, is by definition, intrusive. It's only Purple Prose when it becomes a bother to read.

Personally, zerky is in love with China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, which several other tropers have said to be overly florid in its descriptions, while using loads of big, pretentious (and occasionally incorrect*

) words.

The thing is, though, that even though the prose is occasionally quite showy, it works in instances where eldritch abominations (like the Weaver or the Slake Moths) have to be described. The reader has never seen these things before (or most of the things in the book, for that matter), and for the purpose of the story, we are supposed to find them scary. You can't just say that one's a giant poet spider who likes scissors and the other's an evil moth that eats sapience; well you can - it's serviceable, but it doesn't create any sense of... well anything, except maybe flippancy.

Even though the long descriptions can be a little hard to get through, what should shine through most are the ideas and the execution. Very descriptive prose can work, just like very sparse prose can work. The crux of the matter is really just context, and all that shit.

Neither is better than the other.

*applauds*

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

@Aondeug

Lovecraft's prose isn't so much Purple as some alien shade beyond the realm of comprehension by mortal minds.

The owner of this account is temporarily unavailable. Please leave your number and call again later.

I used to be a Minimalist just from not knowing where to insert description, but I'm starting to think there are advantages to the style, particularly when writing short fiction. Even though I'm gradually inserting more and more description into my work, I'm trying to apportion it precisely, making the reader's mental images of scenes into sketches rather than paintings, and keeping a narrative distance from what might otherwise be overly emotional scenes.

Edit: Though looking over the examples on the page, I note that most of them have a lot less worldbuilding than my usual writing—hence the reason I can't be quite as minimalistic as all that. I guess that fits with Zerky's example of a writer using florid prose for highly detailed worldbuilding.

edited 22nd Jan '12 1:27:56 AM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Both, neither, a hybrid of the two.

A good writer knows that your word choice and the way you structure your sentence will have an impact on the way your reader is reading the book. You use short, minimalistic sentences in fight scenes or when you're doing something from a "primal" perspective, for instance.

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

It's a matter of preference, purple prose does not equal bad writing necessarily.

For example, I absolutely hate the amount of Purple Prose in Lord Of The Rings; yet, it's a great work of literature. Tolkein went to often unnecessary depth to describe his settings, yet, that does not gloss the fact he had a iron-core structure of a story to hang all that frivolous tapestry on.

The problem comes when you are using the Purple Prose to provide strength; Purple Prose is akin to skin and makeup, it does not *replace* skeleton and flesh.

Beige Prose on the other hand, is, to continue the analogy, just a bland skeleton and some muscle. It maybe human, technically, but you wouldn't allow it in the house

edited 22nd Jan '12 8:42:02 AM by ryzvonusef

Herald of the Literature Sub-Forum. Share me your favourite book/series/author!

-twitches at "unnecessary depth" in regards to Tolkien's world building-

The story behind it is quite beautiful. I find the world behind it and the lengths he took to flesh it out the true core of the works however. That's me though and I'm a world building whore...Tolkien and Lovecraft are probably my favorite when it comes to EGREGIOUS descriptions. Lovecraft just has a sexy style.

I will say that for children's books, which I am very fond of, I do like the light beige prose that many modern books have.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

How is Tolkien's prose even remotely purple? It's true he's often in-depth in description, but florid? Hardly. If anything, I think the complaint ought to be that his prose is occasionally too dry.

Always, somewhere, someone is fighting for you. As long as you remember them, you are not alone.

I prefer more flowery details and big words than I do plainer details and more repetitive words. For one thing, big words often have more specific uses than plainer ones, so you can dial down the "feel" of a particular verb or adjective better so it more accurately describes the scene. Plus, I like the "crunch" that purpler prose provides. One of my favorite descriptive phrases of all time is, "It was a wet shirt of a February evening," for example.

edited 8th Mar '12 8:55:19 PM by FreezairForALimitedTime

"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~Madrugada

i know you like to make it out like you're playing it cool and don't care much about the people in your life, but i know deep down you really do. hell, not even that deep down. it's like, um, like your subconscious is having a wet t-shirt contest, and you being all aloof is this totally soggy shirt doing no good at all at hiding nothin'. oh wait, it looks like two can play at this game of cracking all these high falutin psychology books! AW SNAP!!!

edited 22nd Jan '12 3:38:56 PM by zerky

I'm going with Purple Prose, on account of it being easier to make fun of.

[Is doing a Vampire Hunter D drinking game.]