WFC meta discussion: purple prose and lyrical prose

[sartorias]

At WFC last weekend, on Thursday night, someone made a reference to purple prose. Context made it clear that everybody understood what was meant. An hour later, in another conversation altogether, someone made a slighting reference to lyrical writing, making air quotes around the word lyrical. When I asked what was meant, I got an interesting

Comments

Re: blackest midnight

[nipernaadiagain]

Hm, blackest midnight is a winter one, opposed to the lightest midnight in summer (or, when we move more North: midnight sun)

Re: blackest midnight

[sartorias]

Some of these phrases were born out of truth, but when one sees them over and over, especially in situations where different types of night are not in question ("she endured the very blackest night of the soul") the phrase can lose its power.

[kalimac]

"by being human?" Then those of us who can't imagine having more than half-a-dozen or so simultaneous mixed reactions to a given stimulus, are we not human?

[sartorias]

A thousand plus emotions at once? Woo-ee, that is one mighty feeler!

Kidding aside, all of these phrases are born out of truth. The first time I saw achingly vulnerable, it was exactly right. But many, many romance novels later, it had become a Plot Point Phrase. (she is achingly vulnerable just before she admits that she loves him, she loves him!)

[kalimac]

Most of the specific bad examples that you give are attempts to declare the presence of strong emotional reactions by the characters. It reinforces my preference for prose that treats its subjects at a slightly distant formal remove, so that their reactions don't have to be described with such intensity that the writer gropes for words.

I'm considering compiling a little anthology of excerpts of it done right; that is, snippets of descriptions of the extremity of emotion written by the authors I admire most. For instance, one author I admire depicts the absolute emotional nadir of a large novel with this sentence: "At last, weary and feeling finally defeated, he sat on a step below the level of the passage-floor and bowed his head into his hands."

How about that? What makes that plain description so effective? Context, certainly; we've followed this character and have seen him failing at the task he so urgently wants to accomplish, and we know how important it is, so we know what he's feeling without needing strong language

[sartorias]

Just for pickiness's sake, I don't like 'moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell' but otherwise, oh yes, it works. But the distance is not distant. Instead of overwrought emotion, we get the body language of despair==he sits and bows his head in his hands. That is specific, and real.

the darkness covering, just to be picky, I would pick a noun that has weight, or freight, which tide (to me) doesn't, but might to another reader. At any rate, this is powerful emotion, not removed emotion, but conveyed in small details that build the character at each sentence, and so contribute to a powerful effect.

[sartorias]

See my comment to Calimac below

[mrissa]

The one that I heard at a reading recently, though I will not specify whose, was that several different objects in the story were described with a string of similes. "Like an x, like a y, like a z," this person would read. And I feel very sure that for some people, this gave them a richer sensory impression, because I am very aware that I vary from a great many people in sensory impressions. But for me, it was either redundant or self-contradictory. If someone says that something is red like a tomato, like a fire engine, like lipstick, I feel that I know less about its redness than if it was just like one of the above.

[sartorias]

Yep. I forgot to add the simile pile on, but that, too, was brought up several times.

[swan_tower]

Yeah, I was thinking as I read the post that purpleness, from my perspective, is less a matter of adjectives and adverbs (I don't have quite the aversion to them that some people seem to), and more a matter of Figurative Language Overkill. Which is also a hard thing to judge; metaphors and similes are often at their most powerful when they approach something from an unexpected angle that nonetheless strikes the right note. If I don't share the framework that is required for that right note, the metaphor fails for me. As a result, the more heavily metaphorical a passage is, the less likely I am to appreciate it.

(Reaching for five-dollar words is also a big element of purpleness. Very few people can work them in gracefully.)

[azdak]

I think the probem with "very" used as an intensifier in English is that it's no longer productive. It used to mean "true" (as in the line "Very God, begotten not created" from O come, all ye faithful)and that was the original sense in phrases like "touched my very soul" and "got to the very heart of the matter". But nowadays it's lost that meaning and only occurs as a fossilised relic in certain set phrases. And set phrases are, by definition (by their very nature, heh), cliches, in the sense that we've all come across them many times before

[sartorias]

Oh, that's an excellent comment about 'very' having shifted to 'mere' in some instances.

Yes about its original meaning.

We humans are pattern makers, and once-effective phrases become familiar patterns that carry less and less freight. It's up to some bright person to shake it all up and make new ones.