Complaining: Purple Prose

The page is made almost entirely of complaint after complaint, there is much focus on snark and mockery, and very little on actually substantiating why the examples qualify. The trope seems to be confused with "excessive florid prose" in general, except that, in the eyes of some editors, any florid prose is seen as excessive. The difference between this and Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness seems unclear; the article suggests it's a matter of grammar, while the usage says that this trope is for narration while the other is for dialogue. All in all, this trope needs some serious cleanup, starting with the self-demonstrating article, which, in this case, inevitably obscures its own meaning.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Personally I don't believe should have any examples at all. By its definition, this is a criticism trope which indicates bad writing and is thus extremely subjective. It's pretty much like Mary Sue, but for a writing style rather than a particular character.

Fixed the tag. See also the previous thread, where making it YMMV was voted down.

I think that removing the critical parts of the description should help.

As for the distinctions:

• Purple Prose: Very flowery and elaborate writing text.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: A talking style that uses excessively technical and long language.

edited 2nd Jan '14 4:38:38 AM by SeptimusHeap

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

isn't that Spock Speak?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

See the post edit. Spock Speak is often brief. Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness is usually long.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

For starters, this is a pre-existing term in the field of literature and I think we would be remiss not to have an article on the topic.

Secondly, I think there are plenty of examples of authors intentionally using the trope for the sake of humor and parody, especially for In-Universe examples.

However, I would not object to the limiting the example is cases that are intentionally invoked.

Yeah, I'd personally say to limit it to deliberate parodies or references. Maybe make some exceptions for well known historical examples, but beyond that the examples are too subjective.

Also, as I understand it, Purple Prose is basically any time an author uses florid language to mask a lack of content. It's commonly associated with Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, but SL isn't the only aspect; Purple Prose is also defined by needlessly convoluted sentence structure and overuse of metaphor and simile.

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Yeah, but when can you tell how much convoluting is needed, or how much comparing stuff to other stuff is too much? Like, okay, you could make it so that, every time one quotes an example, one actually goes and says "this sentence could have been broken up in simpler bits" or "this needen't be said in such a weird way, saying this or that would have been fine instead". And then you have to look and see whether the pruned result is better than the original at conveying whatever it was trying to convey.

edited 2nd Jan '14 8:10:57 AM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

YMMV, of course. It's why literature is an art, not a science. It's too subjective. Everyone has different tolerances for it.

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This is why I said that this page shouldn't have examples unless it's a deliberate enforcement/parody, because, like pages such as Mary Sue, whether or not a work qualifies as this trope almost entirely depends on the audience's tolerance towards such writings. This is pretty much a medium to complain about bad/pretentious writing styles

I think just having non-straight examples, like lampshades and parodies, is enough. Otherwise it's basically just a bunch of mentions of unusual synonyms some people think aren't simple enough and some other stuff of equal validity.

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So all straight examples have per definition be bad?

Well, yes, otherwise it would just be Florid Prose or something.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I'm not sure the real trouble with the page as it is right now is that it's misused or complaining. I think the real trouble is that it's boring: there are very few examples of true purple prose here.

Ie, I think every single example that doesn't give an example of the purple prose from the work in question should be pruned, or have a sample added.

I also think the description should make more clear that this is very much a trope that is defined by its execution. Going for a flowery, complex, and ornate language is a valid stylistic choice, and a great way to add characterisation. As such, one way to handle the trope is to require the majority of a work to be written this way. If it's just a character or bits and pieces somewhere, then it's can be chalked up as a temporary mistake or bad editing, and safely disregarded.

I really doubt limiting this to lampshadings and similar is a good path forward. We would only get the self-awarely parodic examples that way.

The example section of trope page is generally not the place that we require lots of quotes. Save that for the Quote subpage.

Yeah, but I'm not sure that guideline fits with tropes that are highly stylistic. The example can then point out and discuss the various traits in the text, which will give some help against generic statements, which usually end up as complainy.

My impression is that a lot of quotes pages are more about quotes that discuss the trope, rather than quotes that provide examples of the trope.

Going for a flowery, complex, and ornate language is a valid stylistic choice, and a great way to add characterisation.

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While I agree, the current page definition makes that Not An Example. In order to be Purple Prose, it must be so flowery that it is difficult to read. If the fancy writing is not an impediment to comprehension, it doesn't count.

Which invokes Tropes Are Bad, not Tropes Are Tools. An editor is not likely to ''willingly'" say that the work they like is bad writing.

I see two ways to make acknowledging the Purple Prose more appealing:

• Start listing "downplayed" examples, and list in the definition that a Downplayed example is when the writing isn't difficult to decipher due to the vocabulary.
• Remove the "difficult" from the definition. Which probably runs counter to the pop cultural meaning of this preexisting term.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I'm not sure "difficult to read" should be part of the definition. It's a result of the purple prose, but prose can be purple without being hard to understand. One great example is Jack Vance, who sometimes managed to writing laconic purple prose.

I think one way of looking at it is that purple prose puts the prose—as in style, vocabulary, and so on—ahead of what is being told. One example of purple prose here on this site is on the Added Alliterative Appeal page—not due to it using plenty of long words, but as a result of writing much of the page alliteratively.

A lot of the self-demonstrating articles exhibit similar characteristics.

Going by my understanding of the term from before TV Tropes, I think it's less about obscuring so much it's not comprehensive, and more that it just draws attention to itself and distracts from the actual story. Just using some synonyms wouldn't really count, but an overall language in that tone would. Purple Prose, not Purple Words.

I mean, one example complains about using the words golden, amber, honey-colored, and flame as a colour for eyes instead of yellow. Aside from all of them being shades of yellow-orange, which aren't plain yellow, it's still about single words, rather than the language as a whole. It's missing the forest for the trees, and I think that appears in a lot of examples.

Or maybe that's just the Fan Works folder, which is the worst of the lot. Bunch of generic examples as well.

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I think it's less about obscuring so much it's not comprehensive, and more that it just draws attention to itself and distracts from the actual story

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That is the current requirement: That the language provides an obstacle to comprehension. A double-take, or even a take-and-a-half, is the minimum for the trope requirements. But phrased that way, it is still a complaint about the writing.

"Distracts from the actual story" is actually a more insulting complaint about writing than "It took me a moment to understand", because it means the writing broke Suspension of Disbelief for a moment.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

It's not so much Suspension of Disbelief (which pertains to things you'd normally not believe) as it is plain immersion, but yeah, that's about what it is. It's when you start thinking about the words themselves rather than the story they tell. Which may easily happen if you don't understand the words immediately. And if that's somehow insulting then all criticism is insulting.

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Well, not "insulting" so much as damning.

I'm loving this discussion so far, it's very interesting. But, would you say that Florid Prose would be tropable, as such?

A few examples are from classic or celebrated authors, and come with "and they were really good at it", which seems to detract from the definition of Purple Prose as Bad Writing. Maybe we should have a trope for prose that's elaborate and florid but skillfully and purpusefully so.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

If we are going to start discussing the definition of a preexisting term, it might be helpful to consult other sources than TV Tropes, because we should define the term how the rest of the world defines it, not by how our own article may or may not be written at the moment, or by what our own personal views are about how florid prose should be viewed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=purple%20prose

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/purple_prose

http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/purpleproseterm.htm

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/purple+prose

The following looks like one of the best:

http://writeworld.tumblr.com/post/39271116749/dont-be-a-dickens-avoiding-purple-prose

edited 3rd Jan '14 5:12:49 PM by Catbert

...Best?!

Look, I hate purple prose (and have a broader definition of it than a lot of people I've met). But I definitely don't think an extremely negative definition is one that we really want to use, unless we do intend to go the exampleless definition page route.

I'd prefer something like the Wikipedia definition, which shares the "draws attention to itself" part without all of the "generally unwholesome" and "ACK" baggage.

The term is rarely complimentary, and our description should reflect that. We are writing about what the term means, not what we think it should mean because we want to avoid sounding like we are complaining.

If that means we should only use it is an examples definition page, than so be it. But I think the previously mentioned idea of only including intentional non-straight and In-Universe examples is sufficient.

edited 3rd Jan '14 6:22:33 PM by Catbert