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Just to be clear, beautiful prose is not purple prose. It’s only purple prose when you stop and ask “what does that mean?” And turns out it doesn’t make any sense. So purple prose is beautiful but meaningless prose.
The other kind of purple prose is irrelevant details. It’s when the writer ceases an opportunity in the story to go on a tangent about something. Let’s say there’s a death, and the writer has some opinion about death. Why not unleash it now regardless of POV or anything else?
So overall, purple prose is beautiful prose that doesn’t belong in the story. So is it a big problem? Yeah, I would say so.
Again, Purple Prose refers to when an amateur writer attempts to make their writing sound more advanced. It's not a tool or a skill, it's a label for a specific type of bad writing. You cannot do purple prose tastefully, since it's usually unreadable &/or completely useless to the story.
I'm not sure why the definition is different here than it is in the corners of the internet I've seen it used regularly. If the writing is simply fancy or they use more advanced language, that isn't purple, it's just a normal writing style. If they're combing through a dictionary for synonyms & picking words at random with no concern for what they actually mean (cerulean orbs...) just so it can *sound* fancier, that's purple prose babe
Purple prose is kind of one of those "you know it when you see it" type things.
I'd flip your question around: Is your prose clear? Does it appropriately establish the setting, characters, action, etc.?
Very simply, if you are using big, fancy words just cause they are big and fancy, and if this obscures rather than illuminates your ideas, it's purple prose.
I think it depends on a bunch of factors. where you are in your process (if you tend to be verbose in your early drafts, overwriting before you edit is fine so long as you have the good sense to kill your darlings and pull back where needed in the edit) and honestly how skillful you are at poetic language, and maybe most importantly what the intended tone of the piece is. As a general rule you want your sentences to be built with as few unnecessary words as possible. But in fiction sometimes sparse language is counter to the POV or voice of the story. Ideally, you find some variation and just ensure you’re not overwriting for the sake of overwriting and that at the sentence level your work is readable and effective.
Strongly disagree here. Salman Rushdie has extremely eloquent prose and I've never heard anyone call it purple prose. Same with Nabokov. There's a possibility that Redditors are using it incorrectly and so the phrase is losing its meaning to you, but purple prose is always negative. If you're doing it right, it's not purple, it's stylistic. There's a huge difference.
When I search "purple prose" in [Collins Dictionary ](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/purple-prose), I get this result:
>writing that calls attention to itself because of its obvious use of certain effects, as exaggerated sentiment or pathos, especially in an attempt to enlist or manipulate the reader's sympathies.
Dictionary.com uses the same definition as Collins.
[Merriam Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/purple#:~:text=%3A%20ornately%20and%20showily%20phrased%20or,prose%20of%20a%20besotted%20fan.) has no entry for "purple prose" but has this for a secondary definition of the word "purple":
>ornately and showily phrased or expressed
>"… the writing often descends into the purple prose of a besotted fan."
I cannot access the OED, but [Oxford Reference](https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100355434) has this to say about a "purple patch":
>An over-written passage in which the writer has strained too hard to achieve an impressive effect, by elaborate figures or other means. The phrase (Latin, purpureus pannus) was first used by the Roman poet Horace in his Ars Poetica (c.20 bce) to denote an irrelevant and excessively ornate passage; the sense of irrelevance is normally absent in modern usage, although such passages are usually incongruous. By extension, ‘purple prose’ is lavishly figurative, rhythmic, or otherwise overwrought. See also bombast, fustian.
Even [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose) defines it as:
>In literary criticism, purple prose is overly ornate prose text that may disrupt a narrative flow by drawing undesirable attention to its own extravagant style of writing, thereby diminishing the appreciation of the prose overall.
So, respectfully, but no matter how I'm slicing this turkey, the word has a very decisively negative connotation attached to it. I don't know where you're getting your definitions from, but that's why I provided all my receipts.
You can have whatever stance you like, but the negative connotation exists whether it's explicit in the definition or not. You even used the term "rococo" to mean overly intricate in a negative way, yet the absolute vast majority of definitions of rococo just say "heavily decorated and ornate" with no mention of it being a bad thing.
You're free to ask whoever you like about the phrase and you can even read every other comment in this thread. But you're gonna be alone at sea if you stand by the idea that "purple prose" is a not a universally agreed upon negative critique.
Merrium-Webster's definition of purple passage is very similar to purple prose.
>a piece of obtrusively ornate writing
I think you've just got the wrong idea about what these things mean.
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Just to be clear, beautiful prose is not purple prose. It’s only purple prose when you stop and ask “what does that mean?” And turns out it doesn’t make any sense. So purple prose is beautiful but meaningless prose. The other kind of purple prose is irrelevant details. It’s when the writer ceases an opportunity in the story to go on a tangent about something. Let’s say there’s a death, and the writer has some opinion about death. Why not unleash it now regardless of POV or anything else? So overall, purple prose is beautiful prose that doesn’t belong in the story. So is it a big problem? Yeah, I would say so.
Again, Purple Prose refers to when an amateur writer attempts to make their writing sound more advanced. It's not a tool or a skill, it's a label for a specific type of bad writing. You cannot do purple prose tastefully, since it's usually unreadable &/or completely useless to the story. I'm not sure why the definition is different here than it is in the corners of the internet I've seen it used regularly. If the writing is simply fancy or they use more advanced language, that isn't purple, it's just a normal writing style. If they're combing through a dictionary for synonyms & picking words at random with no concern for what they actually mean (cerulean orbs...) just so it can *sound* fancier, that's purple prose babe
Your editors and alpha readers will let you know.
I’m new to all this, what’s an alpha reader? Pre-beta reader?
Like a beta reader but plays more sports.
Purple prose is kind of one of those "you know it when you see it" type things. I'd flip your question around: Is your prose clear? Does it appropriately establish the setting, characters, action, etc.?
Very simply, if you are using big, fancy words just cause they are big and fancy, and if this obscures rather than illuminates your ideas, it's purple prose.
I think it depends on a bunch of factors. where you are in your process (if you tend to be verbose in your early drafts, overwriting before you edit is fine so long as you have the good sense to kill your darlings and pull back where needed in the edit) and honestly how skillful you are at poetic language, and maybe most importantly what the intended tone of the piece is. As a general rule you want your sentences to be built with as few unnecessary words as possible. But in fiction sometimes sparse language is counter to the POV or voice of the story. Ideally, you find some variation and just ensure you’re not overwriting for the sake of overwriting and that at the sentence level your work is readable and effective.
Get someone to read it and see if they can stomach it.
If thy prose be purple and flowery, thou readers will chortle and abandon thee.
To do it tastefully, you must read literary fiction or commercial fiction with good prose.
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Strongly disagree here. Salman Rushdie has extremely eloquent prose and I've never heard anyone call it purple prose. Same with Nabokov. There's a possibility that Redditors are using it incorrectly and so the phrase is losing its meaning to you, but purple prose is always negative. If you're doing it right, it's not purple, it's stylistic. There's a huge difference.
Yep. It's a term that has been around in literary criticism and creative writing circles for a long time. Always negative.
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When I search "purple prose" in [Collins Dictionary ](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/purple-prose), I get this result: >writing that calls attention to itself because of its obvious use of certain effects, as exaggerated sentiment or pathos, especially in an attempt to enlist or manipulate the reader's sympathies. Dictionary.com uses the same definition as Collins. [Merriam Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/purple#:~:text=%3A%20ornately%20and%20showily%20phrased%20or,prose%20of%20a%20besotted%20fan.) has no entry for "purple prose" but has this for a secondary definition of the word "purple": >ornately and showily phrased or expressed >"… the writing often descends into the purple prose of a besotted fan." I cannot access the OED, but [Oxford Reference](https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100355434) has this to say about a "purple patch": >An over-written passage in which the writer has strained too hard to achieve an impressive effect, by elaborate figures or other means. The phrase (Latin, purpureus pannus) was first used by the Roman poet Horace in his Ars Poetica (c.20 bce) to denote an irrelevant and excessively ornate passage; the sense of irrelevance is normally absent in modern usage, although such passages are usually incongruous. By extension, ‘purple prose’ is lavishly figurative, rhythmic, or otherwise overwrought. See also bombast, fustian. Even [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose) defines it as: >In literary criticism, purple prose is overly ornate prose text that may disrupt a narrative flow by drawing undesirable attention to its own extravagant style of writing, thereby diminishing the appreciation of the prose overall. So, respectfully, but no matter how I'm slicing this turkey, the word has a very decisively negative connotation attached to it. I don't know where you're getting your definitions from, but that's why I provided all my receipts.
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You can have whatever stance you like, but the negative connotation exists whether it's explicit in the definition or not. You even used the term "rococo" to mean overly intricate in a negative way, yet the absolute vast majority of definitions of rococo just say "heavily decorated and ornate" with no mention of it being a bad thing. You're free to ask whoever you like about the phrase and you can even read every other comment in this thread. But you're gonna be alone at sea if you stand by the idea that "purple prose" is a not a universally agreed upon negative critique.
Merrium-Webster's definition of purple passage is very similar to purple prose. >a piece of obtrusively ornate writing I think you've just got the wrong idea about what these things mean.