Purple Fanfic's (total lack of) Majesty
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Purple Fanfic's (total lack of) Majesty |
| Creator: | Arduinna |
| Date(s): | December 2004 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | multi |
| Topic: | fiction writing, fanon |
| External Links: | online here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Purple Fanfic's (total lack of) Majesty is an essay by Arduinna.
It includes some passages from fanfic as examples. The four fics used are from The Sentinel, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings, and "Actor Fandom MarySue."
It is part of a set of essays (Essays: Rants and Rambles) about fiction writing:
- Variety Is the Spice of Life, and I Need Some Tums
- Purple Fanfic's (total lack of) Majesty
- Epithets: Fandom's Designated Hitters
- Said Is Not a Four-Letter Word
Excerpts
At some point in their past, some authors were told "repetition is bad! Use a thesaurus to vary your words!" They were told to use description, to paint pictures with words. Pretty good advice, but as with so many things, it's meant to be taken in moderation and used with specific intent. Taken to the extreme, it leads to the purplest of prose. But how to define purple prose, exactly? It's elaborate, excessively ornate, overblown writing. The first clue is the level of descriptive detail; the second is the type of description. Often, there are adjectives attached to pretty much every noun, or the nouns and verbs shift to something the author thinks is more "fancy", or both.
Not all highly descriptive writing is purple, by a long shot. Some authors are gifted at lush, lyrical prose, carefully crafting every sentence to evoke a mood and image that helps to carry the story along. The key there is that it helps the story; it isn't there simply for the sake of imagery, and the story isn't there simply as an excuse to show off the author's vocabulary. And it evokes the mood and image -- it doesn't hammer it into the poor reader's brain until she gives in and accepts it.Even among purple stories, there are different levels. In the hands of a reasonably skilled writer, purple prose is merely tiring to read -- the reader has to constantly hold all of the author's mental images in her own mind, and never has the chance to build her own, because the author isn't using the images to move the story but instead is using them for their own sake. As a result, it's also distancing; if the reader is unable to create her own version of the author's world, she has no real connection with it.
In the hands of an unskilled writer, purple prose is often simply ludicrous; "cerulean-blue orbs" is a case in point.