Heavy Pondering Redux: Bruised Plums

A piece of disinterred didactic advice

For your reading pleasure I’ve dug up this plum of a post from ten years ago. It was originally published on my personal blog: Book Jones Review (which means almost no one read it). So what d’ya got to lose, give it a spin.

Bruised Plums

Purple prose may be easy for readers to spot, but not so easy for writers. You'll be cranking along on a story thinking, this is great: clever phrasing, strong emotion, just the right words, even a little alliteration thrown in for good measure... All of which is just great, in moderation. Too much flowery, descriptive, or overly emotive and cliched prose will nauseate your readers. It's tough to know just how much well intended cleverness is too much. During the writing process, you may consider those crucial and crafty paragraphs to be plum. But if a rereading makes you laugh, that plum is bruised.

A prime example of purple prose is the opening paragraph of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's, Paul Clifford:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—…