→What color is your prose? (Part 2)

109 7 8
                                    

Hi ulit!

To pick up where we left off, for this chapter, let's talk about beige prose.

Beige prose is like the short, cold and less glamorous counterpart of purple prose. It is a brief description that uses plain words and simple structure. Beige prose does not make use of other intricate figures of speech for imagery.

It is what it is. Kagaya nang pagkakataon na sinabi ng crush mo na, "No." It means no. Don't push your luck.

Kidding aside, beige prose is not all bad. At least it's not that bad within a few patches. It is actually a quick and witty way to make a statement or get your point across. Most of action sequences often involve beige patches to keep the motion fluid and natural and also avoid unnecessary dragging snippets.

That's the good part.

For the negative side, too much beige prose can be boring, bland, lackluster. You don't want all these to cramp up in your story. A good writer should always be able to elicit an emotional response. Mahirap itonh gawin kung puro beige prose lang. At some point you just need to balance out everything.

Sometimes you just need to figure out when to be elaborate and when to be direct. For example, if you're writing an establishing chapter about a fantasy world, using beige prose, may leave your work totally flat and unappealing. It's like you're reading a terrible new article instead of enjoying a good piece of fiction.

Beige prose, as I've said earlier, can be a good material for action sequences but there are other situations where you can use it too.

For example dealing something with absolute finality or maybe raw human emotions, unpleasant experiences. It doesn't need too much lavender glory to make a point.

Example:

Death. Each of us have a different concept of it. It depends from person to person— young, old, religious, academic, skeptic.

I came to a conclusion at an early age. People die everyday. Everyone will die someday. It may be due to different causes. Some lives well lived, some are just downright pitiful. All we do is close our eyes and... drift away.

In this passage you may notice that most of it was just simple sentences. No fancy words used. There was comparison but there was no deep metaphor. It was simply a point laid out.

It gives an idea about a child dealing with a loss and building a life mantra off of it. Of course a passage like this is not so bad on it's own but imagine a whole story written with equal detachment. Collectively beige prose is just bland and lazy but it's good if you sprinkle some patches from time to time.

Naabot mo na ang dulo ng mga na-publish na parte.

⏰ Huling update: Jan 02, 2019 ⏰

Idagdag ang kuwentong ito sa iyong Library para ma-notify tungkol sa mga bagong parte!

How, What, Why Tahanan ng mga kuwento. Tumuklas ngayon