Overwrought Writing

1780 Views 21 Replies 10 Participants Last post by Keith Strohm, Dec 23, 2012

Keith Strohm

Discussion Starter · Dec 23, 2012

All,

Sometimes when I am pushing through a long section of my Work In Progress, and the words stop sputtering out of me and start to flow, I have to be on guard against a muse that loves to run "purple." If I'm not careful, what starts out as serviceable and, rarely beautiful, prose becomes too florid and overwrought. Here's today's example. It was the last line I wrought before saving my document and heading home from Panera:

Envenomed with witchbane and the heady poison of unslaked vengeance, Jaelle ran headlong into the night.

Anyone else want to cough up their most purple lines?

Keith

1 - 20 of 22 Posts

dalya

· #2 · Dec 23, 2012

This does not happen to me, not with the purple, but some people find my mimetic writing to be "too far."

What's that? "Tell us more?" Why, I thought you'd never ask ...

I'm running down the side of a mountain. James and Julie are calling my name, but I can't be held back by them. I need to find the river. I know there's a river here, because it feeds the lake. A jackrabbit hops across my path. I swear at the jackrabbit for taunting me.
I trip over some rocks. I swear, out loud, at the rocks. Where is the water? Where is the river? I have to get there. I have to get to the water. Down, down the side of the mountain. I run faster. I have to go faster, I have to get away. The ground is rushing up to me and I'm falling, tumbling. Someone's hitting my head. Stop hitting me, I have to go.
The mountain is a cruel entity, mocking me and pummeling me. Everything hurts. My eyes are piercing with pain and my lungs burn. Something trips me again, and I'm on my knees.
Water? Where is the river? I need to be in the cool water.
I look down at my hands, grasping handfuls of grass and dirt.
It all stops. I'm staring at a screen that's blank, except for one cloud. I close my eyes. I can die right now, it's okay. I don't mind. It's okay.
Why is this screen blank?
My arm hurts.
Why are people calling my name?
"Zan!"
"Zan?"
Someone is crying. My hands are dirty and I'm rubbing them on my face. It feels good. The mud will staunch the tears and I can disappear into the earth.

Keith Strohm

Discussion Starter · #3 · Dec 23, 2012

Dalya,

Wow...that is...intense! Thanks for sharing! Anyone else?

Keith

JumpingShip

· #4 · Dec 23, 2012

I actually tend to go in the other direction and my sentences become too short and stilted. Kind of like Dick and Jane books.

timskorn

· #5 · Dec 23, 2012

Dalya I just have to say i've laughed at a lot of your posts on KB. Your sense of humor jumps right out in your posts. What kind of books do you write? Besides books on rock climbing.

dalya

· #6 · Dec 23, 2012

timskorn said:
Dalya I just have to say i've laughed at a lot of your posts on KB. Your sense of humor jumps right out in your posts. What kind of books do you write? Besides books on rock climbing.

Oh, I guess I don't have my little banner in my signature today. I shall reinstate it now. I'm working on some sci-fi now, probably a new pen name, but in the meantime, I have a random assortment of things, each more amazing and spectacular than the last. There is sex in the one with the boobs on the cover.

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Quiss

· #7 · Dec 23, 2012

Keith Strohm said:
Envenomed with witchbane and the heady poison of unslaked vengeance, Jaelle ran headlong into the night.

My prose tends to be dialogue-rich and tight on exposition, but I just wanted to say that "unslaked" is a darn fine word.
In fact, being a little unslaked myself right now, I think I'll have a glass of wine.

timskorn

· #8 · Dec 23, 2012

Dalya said:
Oh, I guess I don't have my little banner in my signature today. I shall reinstate it now. I'm working on some sci-fi now, probably a new pen name, but in the meantime, I have a random assortment of things, each more amazing and spectacular than the last. There is sex in the one with the boobs on the cover.

Oh good because the other books look wayyy too smoochy for me. The boob conveys a more positive message to my lizard brain.

dalya

· #9 · Dec 23, 2012

timskorn said:
Oh good because the other books look wayyy too smoochy for me. The boob conveys a more positive message to my lizard brain.

I should re-release them all as Men's Editions with covers featuring camouflage gear, cigars, and processed lunch meat.

Quiss said:
My prose tends to be dialogue-rich and tight on exposition, but I just wanted to say that "unslaked" is a darn fine word.
In fact, being a little unslaked myself right now, I think I'll have a glass of wine.

I don't like words I don't know, but unslaked is familiar enough, thus it shall squeak by.

I really don't like "lave" or things being "laved," and once I learned the meaning, I liked it even less. I'd never write anything I wouldn't say out loud in a conversation, with the exception of "gaze." I do say "thus" in conversation.

ETA: The most evil person on the planet (an ex) complimented my vocabulary on an early date. I should have spotted his evil flattery.

Keith Strohm

Discussion Starter · #10 · Dec 23, 2012

Quiss said:
My prose tends to be dialogue-rich and tight on exposition, but I just wanted to say that "unslaked" is a darn fine word.
In fact, being a little unslaked myself right now, I think I'll have a glass of wine.

Haha...thanks! Unslaked is a great word! Every so often, my bouts of purple prose yield a nugget or two!

Keith

Keith Strohm

Discussion Starter · #11 · Dec 23, 2012

Not too many takers tonight, huh. That's ok...I'm not too embarrassed to open the vault. Here's one that just teeters on the edge, and probably topples over into the Purple dimension:

Aldeth watched in horrified fascination as it slithered through the spell like some ebon-skinned leviathan somnolently navigating the sluggish, gelid waters of the Northron Circle.

The hits just keep coming!!

Keith

George Berger

· #12 · Dec 23, 2012

Keith Strohm said:
Anyone else want to cough up their most purple lines?

Aww, but you say "purple" like it's a bad thing...

It was a bright and pleasant night in that genteel backwater town, and the silvery rays of the moon, full as a pregnant dog with promises of intrigue and romance, shone and sparkled through the cloudless sky, casting their tender illumination without discrimination upon sights both mundane and intriguing. Counted without question among the latter was a dark-suited, fair-haired figure who made his way with modest quickness up the vertical expanses of an ivy-covered wall that stoically supported one end of the sprawling mansion which had belonged, for at least five generations, to the local branch of a certain family of some small renown in richer and more sophisticated surroundings than this. He-with the sureness of hand and foot with which he scaled the greenery, gone dark grey in the moonlight, there could be no doubt that he was a he and not a she, even without seeing his ruggedly handsome face-moved silently and with great determination, growing ever further from the sweet embrace of terra firma even as he approached a large and dramatically Gothic balcony.
As he reached, at last, the level of that balcony, finely assembled years ago of carefully-crafted stone now worn and weathered by decade after decade of exposure to the whimsical furies of nature itself, he pulled himself with practiced ease onto and then over the railing, finally coming to stand suavely upon the very surface of the balcony itself. There he paused for a brief moment to double-check his impeccable sartorial excellence, before, having done so, pausing once more to admire his reflection in the glazed doors before him. He was tall, with well-cut hair, a square chin, and a handsomely aristocratic nose, and dressed in a three-piece suit of fine imported wool, expertly tailored to fit his lean and muscular frame. On his average-sized feet were laced a matching pair of hand-tooled shoes made from the tough and gorgeous hide of an exotic and unpronounceable foreign animal.
He was, in short, a stunningly handsome man of indeterminate age, blessed with a supple body, a keen mind, a comprehensive if occasionally ignored sense of right and wrong, and-not least-the sort of face that launched a thousand inappropriate and sin-filled fantasies. Oh, he was not without his faults, it must be said-he had a relentless, almost enthusiastic inability to appreciate fine liquor, his left foot was half a size larger than his right, and he had eyes-deep rich swirling orbs that twinkled when he laughed and fairly glowed when he was taken with strong emotion-that were occasionally and not entirely without cause described upon some occasions as "weaselly" and even "squirrelly". In sufficiently poor light, however, and from the right angle, it could not be denied by anyone save perhaps his debtors that he was a dangerously attractive gentleman.

^^ The opening to one of my Victorian novellas, writ in the style of late 19th-century adventures, each over ten-thousand words long. I've said it before, but it's really hard to write that "badly".

Some people might view the fact that I've sold copies of this to strangers, and not had them returned for a refund, as among my greatest accomplishments as a writer.

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JumpingShip

· #13 · Dec 23, 2012

Keith Strohm said:
Not too many takers tonight, huh. That's ok...I'm not too embarrassed to open the vault. Here's one that just teeters on the edge, and probably topples over into the Purple dimension:

Aldeth watched in horrified fascination as it slithered through the spell like some ebon-skinned leviathan somnolently navigating the sluggish, gelid waters of the Northron Circle.

The hits just keep coming!!

Keith

I can't match your purple prose. I'm not even sure what gelid means? My prose is closer to a pale violet than purple. Here's one from my WIP.

The deluge hit the roof with a deafening staccato beat that filled the diner as if a marching band was performing on top of the building.

Soothesayer

· #14 · Dec 23, 2012

George Berger said:
the moon, full as a pregnant dog with promises of intrigue and romance

Ye gods!!!

Quiss

· #15 · Dec 23, 2012

Dalya said:
I'd never write anything I wouldn't say out loud in a conversation, with the exception of "gaze." I do say "thus" in conversation.

On that note, I've always wanted to know if Americans actually say "whilst" in conversation.

George Berger

· #16 · Dec 23, 2012

Soothesayer said:
Ye gods!!!

Yup.

Keith Strohm

Discussion Starter · #17 · Dec 23, 2012

George...now that's what I call a paragraph!!!

Thanks to you and Mary for sharing! And thanks to everyone else...this is exactly the kind of thread I was hoping for. Keep them coming!!

Keith

timskorn

· #18 · Dec 23, 2012

I used the word "acrid" in a sentence once and everyone looked at me like "huh?" You're not actually supposed to say words like that. Duh.

I'd try and post one of mine, but I'm fairly certain I can't beat the ones before me. That's some mouthy stuff!

MLKatz

· #19 · Dec 23, 2012

Quiss said:
On that note, I've always wanted to know if Americans actually say "whilst" in conversation.

They do not say it, know how to spell it, or know what it means - at least not in Texas. I think I have read that word in a post on another forum, understood it from the context, and assumed the poster was British or from another century or something.

WG McCabe

· #20 · Dec 23, 2012

Quiss said:
On that note, I've always wanted to know if Americans actually say "whilst" in conversation.

I say it occasionally. Not intended, it just sort of pops out.

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