How, What, Why

(9) What color is your prose? (Part 1 )

Hello and welcome to another chapter!

So as you can see in the title, we will talk about the color of prose, all about what the hell does it mean up to when is the right time to use it.

Let me ask you guys. Have you heard about blue, beige and purple prose?

This aspect, believe it or not is very crucial but most times overlooked. As a writer it's also hard to distinguish your prose color if you haven't really read and scrutinized materials as a reader first.

This will be divided into three parts because it's quite broad and very controversial.

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So umpisahan natin sa  Purple Prose.

Mahilig ka ba sa mga mabulaklaking salita, sopistikadong deskripsyon, at napakamadetalye na mga talata?

Well my friend, purple prose is just like that.

"Purple prose is the name given to writing, that's just too flowery, too melodramatic, too overdone. I think perhaps writers who don't have confidence in their own skills write to impress and can run the risk of their prose getting too purple. They're trying too hard and therefore are over-compensating."

—Fiction Writer's Mentor 2018

It's when you're so extra, naka-gown ka pa rin kahit pupunta lang kayo sa beach. Yung kailangan mo lang ng tubig pero isang buong tropical storm ang hiniling mo. Gano'n siya ka unnecessary.

It's too flowery that it takes away the purpose and the clarity of the message and just leaves you with a ton of unnecessary details.

Baka sabihin niyo, so 'wag na idetalye at no to big words na?

It is not just about big words and details guys. It's when it's just too much that it has no point whatsoever. It doesn't have an action or doesn't make your plot or scene move forward.

Example:

I am a wanton woman naive of the machinations of this cruel world. I hanker for the presence of this noble heathen as we ride on his on his vintage Corvet which was painted the color of blood red. The shade of the sky when the moon eclipses and shows nothing but it's vibrant penumbra. Whenever we elope, through the ecstatic feeling of liberation I can hear my precious mother's ominous weeping.

This is just a thesaurus overload. Like come on,  I bet the main speaker doesn't even know a thing about ominous weeping and evil machinations. Plus it has a lot of unnecessary snipets that doesn't contribute anything. It's about a stupid girl and a guy with a red car. Get over it! Not to mention that the sentence construction is very basic but it becomes blurry and complicated because of all the purpleness. The voice was passive, the tone doesn't match with anything and the choice of words are well they're being a show off without a goal.

Here is another example:

His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday’s hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface. He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn’t sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal.

Don't get surprised. It's from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. Ok, I admit thay I never really liked Twilight like most sane people. Mainly because it's over rated and full of purple trash like this.

Someone might hate me for this but come on... you know it's not just a single opinion. It's truth.

Anyway, in the passage it does draw attention to itself, but it will quickly lose that attention. Wala siyang action, wala siyang patutungunan. The rhythm and and the tone is all over the place. Basically ang point niya lang ay kumikinang si Edward tapos nakahiga siya sa damuhan. It can be written better without the words "incandescent" , "scintillating", "glistening", "glittering" which are very very very redundant.

There is difference in writing a lyrical and engaging prose between just flooding it with purple language that doesn't get the point across.

Ngayon baka sabihin ng iba na well, ganyan lang talaga ang style ng writer at hindi mo ba nakikita na magaling siya napakalawak ng vocabulary?

Purple prose is not equivalent to "good writing."

Some works can still be descriptive and ornate but at the same time, they can still elicit an emotional reaction. It can still have pretty words but with an actual point.

Here are some examples of passages from the book Everyday by David Levithan. I personally noticed that his syntax is very simple and most times direct but there are some of these patches that sticked to me.

We all want everything to be okay. We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay because most of the time, it's enough.

Just one good day. I have wandered for so long without any sense of purpose, and now this ephemeral purpose has been given to me— it feels like it has been given to me. I only have one day—so why can't it be a good one?  Why can't it be a shared one?  Why can't I take the music of the moment and see how long it can last?

You see where I'm going with this? Let me know your thoughts!