#overall I just hate the idea of categorising and adding value to prose styles
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foxmulderautism · 11 months ago
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purple prose might be another term that needs to be put on the high shelf of writing advice cause why does nobody seem to agree on what it actually means 😭😭😭
#atp does the ‘correct’ definition even matter? within community it’s already wildly used ooc and unhelpfully#like is it all ‘elaborate’ prose or is it when prose is overdone? who decides when prose is overdone?#I don’t really use the term at all for myself personally bc I think like pantsing it doesn’t say anything#and is too broad you know#I also don’t think it’s wise to have a term that’s essentially going to be used to mean Style Is Bad And Invalid#teenage me felt fucking awful when I realised people would consider my prose purple!!!#and even if my prose was in hindsight hard to understand - purple prose as an idea didn’t give me the tools#to unpack that for myself and understand better how to approach the balance of style and clarity#(I’m even gonna go and say clarity is not an objective thing either and in some cases#writers will have the intention to challenge clarity#also I think clarity as an idea is interesting when you think about prose vs poetry#imagine a ​guy who reads a poem and says well that’s purple prose )#overall I just hate the idea of categorising and adding value to prose styles#prose is such a fluid thing#I like the spectrum of maximalist to minimalist but I’d say even then I go across it in a single project sometimes#also prose style and what is popular and what ‘works’ is something that#is very often connected to culture and language#what if we told writeblr how many ideas of good writing are just rooted in anglo/western centrism LOL
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