Simple verse Purple Prose: 14 Authors and Writers battle on Novel-Writing linguistics. Who wins?

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In this video, I - The Idiot - ask 15 Authors and Writers to divulge if they prefer “Simple” or “Purple” Prose. Experts in this video include Sacha Black (Author, AuthorTuber @SachaBlack & Podcaster), Zo Marley (Writer & AuthorTuber @ZoMarley), JH DeMond & TJ Berry (Authors), John McKay (Author), Jami Fairleigh (Writer & “Fellow Idiot”), Izzy Mongeau (Writer & BookTuber @IzzyMongeau), Emily Lau (Writer & BookTuber @Emiloid), Kaitlyn Johnson (Literary Agent & Editor), JC Hartcaver (Author), Monique (BookTuber @ReadingWithMoe), Bonnie Baraka (Author), Andrew Birch a.k.a The Birch Twins (Author) and KA Black (Writer & Pitch Wars Mentor)
#TheIdiotOnTheWritersBlock #WritingTips #SimpleProseVsPurpleProse
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A member of The Inner Circle Writers Facebook group (howdy Guys & Dolls!) asked if “Simple Prose” was considered bad writing. Before I could formulate my opinion, a plethora of responses swelled in the reply section. Going through them, I noticed two camps forming; one which rebuked the notion of Simple prose being considered bad, arguing instead that Purple Prose was pretentious; while the other side cursed out their rebukers, saying “If you want to write simple, keep it to yourself!” Or words to that effect.
I think I know into which camp I fall, but am I right? Am I following the best practice possible to become the GREAT novelist I wish to be, instead of just passable?
So in this video, I ask 14 Experts if they preferred Simple Prose or Purple Prose. If it’s a landslide, then I’m either in good company or need to adjust my writing habits…
// EXPERTS IN THIS VIDEO //
Sacha Black (Author & Podcaster)
“Keepers”, “Victor”, “Trey”, “13 Steps To Evil”, “13 Steps to Hero”, “The Anatomy of Prose”
Website: sachablack.co.uk
Podcast: sachablack.co....
Zo Marley (Writer & AuthorTuber)
KZbin: @ZoMarley rb.gy/hrxazq
Instagram: / j
Emily Lau (BookTuber)
KZbin: @Emiloid rb.gy/istwov
Instagram: / hil_yan
Twitter: / sturm_und_drang
Monique (BookTuber)
KZbin: @Reading with Moe bit.ly/3gDqNym
Andrew Birch a.k.a The Birch Twins (Author)
“Poohsticks Bridge”
Amazon: rb.gy/8scgaw
Bonnie Baraka (Author)
“Slicers”
Amazon: rb.gy/l4uqo8
Instagram: / bonniebaraka
Website: www.bonniebara...
John McKay (Author)
“The Girl’s Guide to the Apocalypse”
Amazon: rb.gy/r12w3c
Book Trailer: rb.gy/sz0x97
Facebook: www.facebook.c...
TJ Berry & JH DeMond (Authors)
“Fox Fire: The Kitsune”, “Midnight Princess: The Knight Wolf”,
“Fiery Witch: The Cursed Brothers”, “Fox Fire: Family Ties”, “Midnight Princess: The New Blood”,
“Fiery Witch: The Fairy Queen”, “Olympus Awakening: Gods Among Us”
Amazon: amzn.to/2Ub12df
Twitter: / thetjberry / jhdemond
Jami Fairleigh (Writer)
Website: jamifairleigh....
Twitter: ja...
K.A. Black (Writer & Pitch Wars Mentor)
Website: authorkablack.com
J.C. Hartcarver (Author)
“Sufferborn”, “Unwilling Deity”
Amazon: rb.gy/zjukbh
Website: jchartcarver.com
Instagram: / jc_hartcarver
Kaitlyn Johnson (Literary Agent)
Belcastro Agency
Website: museandthemark...
Query Tracker: querytracker.n...
Twitter: re...
Izzy Mongeau (Writer & BookTuber)
KZbin: @IzzysInk kzbin.info/door/...
Twitter: / izzys_ink_
Instagram: / izzymongeau
// MUSIC//
“Bounce Right Back” by Reversus and “Heavy Weights” by Marten Moses, sourced from EpidemicSound.com
bit.ly/3agCAAi

Пікірлер: 35

@rachelthompson9324 2 жыл бұрын

why do people confuse bad prose with style?

@randywaldron2715 9 ай бұрын

I think the division into simple and purple is misleading. How about simple, complex, and purple? Purple and complex are not really the same thing. Maybe we also need to address the question of the reader's attention span, something which overall has grown shorter over time.

@theidiotonthewritersblock 7 ай бұрын

Hi there! Sorry for the delay in responding. You make a few great points there. In this case, we combined complex and purple to keep the comparison clean. It’s more to do with the extremes on either side of the spectrum: simple story structure or flurried fanciful fiction. If we split the latter category into Complex vs Purple, which of the two do you prefer?

@darkengine5931 4 ай бұрын

@@theidiotonthewritersblock I'd echo the sentiment. To me, purple prose isn't prose that's complex. On the contrary, simple prose can be purple as well, and these days I often find more simple prose being purple than anything. Instead, purple prose is prose that's vague and abstract and/or draws attention to itself: it often lacks concreteness and specificity, like the ambiguous nature of a lot of poetry with all of its symbolisms and metaphors. "His love for her was the spiderweb of hope." That's exceedingly simple (elementary school writing level) but extremely purple, abstract, and lacking in specificity. The Fifth Season's prose is very purple to me despite also being exceedingly simple. Excerpt: >> So he reaches deep [...] Then he reaches wide [...] Lastly, he reaches up. For power. He takes all that, the strata and the magma and the people and the power, in his imaginary hands. Everything. He holds it. He is not alone. The earth is with him. Then he breaks it. The prose in the book is very simple (7th grade reading level) but also vague and lacking in specificity. It also draws a lot of attention to itself, like using "then" and "lastly" jarringly in present tense along with exceedingly many attention-grabbing sentence fragments, comma splices, and other odd formatting and structural pattern disruptions. If we compare to Proust: >> She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory--this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. This prose is extremely complex (college graduate writing level) but not very purple. It's delving far more into the concrete to balance the abstract, and specifics over vagueness and ambiguity. I much prefer complex over purple.

@rachelthompson9324 2 жыл бұрын

Purple prose is a field of bad chestnuts the reader must walk on, whereas a chestnut is a surprising moment of nutrition in a field of smooth grass that doesn't hurt the reader's feet. Purple proses covers the best moments with sticky syrup and too much of it makes a reader sick. What makes a chestnut work is purpose and meaning at just the right moment. If every moment is fanciful there are no special moments.

@theidiotonthewritersblock 2 жыл бұрын

That is a great analogy for purple prose. However, Could there be a certain amount of sticky syrup that isn’t too much and instead adds to the delight when you get to the chestnut? A pro po of nothing, I’m hungry…

@rachelthompson9324 2 жыл бұрын

@@theidiotonthewritersblock To me, a few chestnuts are good which are usually purple in nature. The point is, too much of that and the good stuff doesn't stand out, it losses meaning and impact. It distracts the reader from the story. What serves the story is good, which by extension, serves the reader. Too many writers get lost in the joy of making words and forget that the effort must satisfy the reader first and not the author's ego.

@theidiotonthewritersblock 2 жыл бұрын

Agreed. Being purple for purple sake is obvious and tedious to read.

@chuckwieser7622 2 жыл бұрын

I've noticed two of the editors comment that George Martin's prose are purple and long and even puts him and Tolkien in the same boat. To me Martin's pros are very simple and straightforward. Once in a while he uses an odd word. But they don't seem like very complicated sentence structures. In fact my biggest complaint about him is he doesn't describe things enough. I wish head go into Detail more. Unlike LoTR Which took me forever to get through, because it's overly descriptive for my taste. Would anyone else like to weigh in? I'm waylaid by these observations.

@theidiotonthewritersblock 2 жыл бұрын

That’s a very good point, and makes me consider this: could one person’s purple be another’s simple? As Tolkien and George wrote in different times, could it be that in 30s-50s, Tolkien’s prose may not have been considered purple when it came out?

@chuckwieser7622 2 жыл бұрын

@@theidiotonthewritersblock that would make sense. And also I think the fact that modern people watch a lot more television and movies than they did back then In my writing, I often feel like I'm in competition with television... Which I love. 😉. Also, I've heard that Tolkien was literally paid by the word. So he would be overly descriptive because the publishers wanted it and he was getting paid for it.

@theidiotonthewritersblock 2 жыл бұрын

@@chuckwieser7622 Yup. If I was paid per word, you know I’d find twelve ways to describe “chair”. I would describe it with so many words, it would be an alien concept after I was through. Script writing is the complete opposite. Direct and straight to the point!

@chuckwieser7622 2 жыл бұрын

@@theidiotonthewritersblock 😆 🤣 😂 oh yeah--Daddy needs a new pair of Loafers... and a Black and White 📺, because it's the 1950's

@darkengine5931 2 жыл бұрын

@@chuckwieser7622 I've never been a huge fan of Tolkien's writing style in spite of loving a lot of fantasy and sci-fi and vividly descriptive writing (Ray Bradbury, Robert E. Howard, Lance Vance, etc). I'm at least somewhat a fan of ASoIaF, and far more so than LOTR. For me, maybe LOTR is just so heavy on lore and backstory. I'm too much of a layman to literature and not at all a writer to fully articulate why it's not my cup I tea, but I felt constantly lost reading it as it introduced so many new characters, deep lineages, drawing out maps verbally like Gondor to the west and the forboding Mordor to the east with all the locations in between which quickly evaporate from my brain. I felt somewhat like I was reading an encyclopedia with a story in the middle. It's heavy on describing things IIRC but not necessarily what I consider the most descriptive writing of the sort that immerses me into the setting which focuses a lot on sensations like how things look, taste, sound, smell, and feel to the touch.

@MasticinaAkicta 2 жыл бұрын

Know your audience right. Yes if you lived in 1920 and you knew you had a captive audience you could go as purple as you wanted. If you write a blog, keep it simple stupid. Get to the point! So depending on the audience of your book or writing adjust your style.

@theidiotonthewritersblock Жыл бұрын

Spot on! Though people may like a purple blog…

@adamf3985 3 жыл бұрын

I prefer writing and reading simple prose. I primarily read fantasy, but I couldn't read Lord of the Rings. I dragged myself through 10-20 pages at a time because it's a classic, but I didn't have any engagement with what was going on.

@theidiotonthewritersblock 3 жыл бұрын

I think Purple prose suited at a time when radio, TV and the internet didn’t exist.

@adamf3985 3 жыл бұрын

Especially tv and internet. They provide much more efficient and vivid ways to convey descriptions than one can do with words. I sometimes wonder if the presence of those type of media atrophied my brain muscles that would have otherwise grown to vividly picture word-based descriptions.

@theidiotonthewritersblock 3 жыл бұрын

@@adamf3985 That is exactly correct, in my opinion. How do you describe, using words on a page, the image of a single long-stemmed violet on an autumn evening when you can see it on a 4K Wide screen???

@theidiotonthewritersblock 3 жыл бұрын

@@adamf3985 There is a strong argument in support of that idea. If you don’t exercise a particular muscle or ability, it withers. Mothers who have spent months around their babies and baby programs have reportedly identified the lag they have in returning to adult conversation. I know that’s anecdotal, but if you were raised consuming Television, you’ll gravitate to that content and it’s format.

@darkengine5931 2 жыл бұрын

@@adamf3985 Oddly, I thought Tolkien wasn't vividly descriptive enough. He describes a whole lot of things (don't get me wrong), but his writing style doesn't make things come alive and immerse me in the scene as with other fantasy authors. For example, consider the description of Miruvor: >> `Give them this,' said Gandalf, searching in his pack and drawing out a leathern flask. `Just a mouthful each -- for all of us. It is very precious. It is Miruvor, the cordial of Imladris. Elrond gave it to me at our parting. Pass it round!' [...] As soon as Frodo had swallowed a little of the warm and fragrant liquor he felt a new strength of heart, and the heavy drowsiness left his limbs. That's about the most descriptive passage in the book from what I can find and remember about Miruvor; it's referenced multiple times in the books but that's the only part vaguely describing what it's like that I can recall. All I know is that it's some sort of elven cordial from Rivendell, that it's warm and fragrant, seems to function like an energy drink, and probably quite valuable even among elves since it was a parting gift from Elrond to Gandalf (probably not the type of thing elves can possess and consume in abundance). I have no idea how it looks exactly except vaguely, not a single hint about how it tastes, only "fragrant" to describe its smell, if it's intoxicating in any way or simply invigorating, what it's made out of, etc. He also uses a lot of very vague adjectives IIRC like "mighty" a whole lot: "mighty" kings, "mighty" pillars, but "mighty" in exactly what way? Obviously perhaps tall and powerful, but it's rather vague and not exactly the type of thing that stands out and makes me remember it. Similar with the case of "fragrant" above. His style doesn't really make things come alive to me on the page and burn into my memory. So as odd as it sounds, I wish Tolkien was more descriptive, not less (although I might benefit if he described fewer things in exchange for describing them in more detail). I might be able to remember things better (a problem I had with LOTR; I kept forgetting what things were and who people were) if he painted them more vividly so that they burn into my sensory imagination.