Purple Prose? No, it's Called Style.

[norilana]

I have been, upon occasion, described as writing purple proseAs someone whose native linguistic mindset was formed by the Russian language first before any other, and whose reading was shaped by old literature, I used to find it curious, but understandable -- cognitive and linguistic differences abound between various languages and evolving eras of

Comments

[starshipcat]

Yeah. I keep getting dinged for having "too many" named characters -- it seems at least some editors have this formula that a story of x length should have no more than y named characters.

But every time I try to ration myself on the number of named characters, I keep hitting places where the minor characters I'm trying to leave name-unmentioned have to be referred to or addressed by name or it makes the other character look incredibly rude and disrespectful, with attendant hit on reader sympathy levels. It's almost like the story is determined to force me to mention their names on the page just as soon as I try to hold myself down to a minimal number of named characters.

I figure that if a person here in the Primary world would say or think the other person's name in the situation, the character in the Secondary World should use the other character's name similarly, unless there's a reason within that Secondary World that they wouldn't (say, if names have magical power in that world and using them carelessly can attract the attention of malign entities). But then I've always been one of those seat-of-the-pants writers who find formal rules and formulas more frustrating than helpful.

[marycatelli]

Wrestling with natural naming patterns and drowning the readers in characters they have a hard time keeping straight -- and which may be given undue importance in readers' eyes by names -- is something I've been arguing with for a long time.