I think of some of the turns of phrase you see in the P.G. Wodehouse/Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett strain of humor writing. Like: or the various strange verbs used for how Jeeves moves (like "shimmering into the room").
i'm all for using nonstandard verbs! the problem is that, unless you're taking the legal meaning of "impose a punishment," the word sentence just means "a grammatically complete phrase." used as a verb, it doesn't tell us anything whatsoever about his tone or his body language or his thought process or anything. the writer has to use "harshly" to convey tone. i definitely use things like "'just try me,' they smirked" or "don't even think about it,' he spat." but those words, smirk and spit, have meanings and connotations that impart some information on the reader about the speaker. "sentenced" just tells me that... he spoke? cool thanks. edit: @LadyNighteyes yes exactly! "gangled" and "shimmered" both tell us something about the person that's doing the action. both are evocative words that conjure a specific image, and even if it's not the way you'd expect the words to be used, you get a clear picture from them. "sentenced" does not do this. so, props for trying something new i guess, but swing and a miss this time.
Personally it drives me nuts when people use words like "smirked" or "smiled" or other verbs that describe facial expressions to replace 'said', but then I love adverbs to describe how people say things and a lot of people seem to hate them. One of the things I've noticed over the last five years or so is people using nouns as verbs to describe the act of being a certain thing. I like it, a lot of other languages do similar things. I'm talking about sentences like "Sometimes I think my Asterix has forgot how to cat" or "the girliest girl who ever girled." It's not appropriate for narration in some character voices, but I like it when it fits. There's also a thing where nouns get turned into verbs that mean "how to use/do the thing", as in sentences like "I don't know how to weed" or "She doesn't know how to lolita right."
the fuck adverbs even do besides get overused i guess but really an entire class of words isn't like fucking evil you just gotta use 'em good
" 'I love you, all right?' He said jokingly. is miles away from 'I love you, all right?' He said coldly. But avoid at all cost 'I love you, all right?' He said lovingly. " -How Not To Write A Novel
I think, as with a great deal of bad writing advice, the "ADVERBS ARE SATAN" thing is largely the Hemingway groupies' fault.
As with most writing advice, there's some truth to it, but gets taken to the absurd "NEVER AN ADVERB EVER AAAA". Too many goop up a sentence and make your eyes slide right off the page. I've been reading a lot of not-great fic lately and it's miles easier to read babbies' first "he got in the car. He drove to the store. He got out and went in. He bought a coffee" than it is to read "the sun shone brightly as he ambulated to his red 2015 Toyota and opened the door, getting inside before he started the car. He drove quickly on the busy roads to--" aaaargh why would you do this.
I´d honestly rather read the second? The first makes me feel like I´m reading a police report or something.
I mean, it's fine for a little while, but when it goes on unvaryingly for 500 word paragraphs it's exhausting. The first one's just dull.
I too REALLY FUCKING DETEST entirely beige prose. Granted, I also believe Hemmingway was the worst thing to ever happen to the English language and view people like James Joyce, William Faulkner, and H.P. Lovecraft as the saviors it needed. I'd rather read the second for an entire fic because at least I could be entertained by bad purple prose perhaps or even find nice purple prose.
Bad beige prose can occasionally be about as hilarious as bad purple prose (cf. legolas by laura), but it's less common.
I think beige prose has its place, but I have a strong preference for purple if we're going to swing heavily to one side. And for a beginner, beige is... playing it safe. Like, the example above is certainly a sequence of events! The purple prose version at least tries to paint you a picture, even if the strokes are sloppy. Someone getting caught up in purple prose is at least using brushes, you know? Going pure beige- without it being a stylistic choice, for instance intending to mimic official reports or similar- is like outlining a sketch and calling it a painting. You can tell what it's supposed to be, but it's not really there yet, it's incomplete. Purple prose might be nauseating to look at, but at least a step forward. And at some point you learn to balance.
Also my woes of "I literally forgot how to even prose" continue. I'm not sure what to do about it at this point. I guess just keep writing poetry fics. Jesus. But how the fuck do you like write prose? That is entirely too many words and the flow is all wrong and we care a bit more about things like plot and reasonable sequences of events.
The first one is way more exhausting to me. there's nothing to keep the attention. No sentence length variety, no word choice variety, no metaphor, no energy.... I would absolutely take the second over the first.
I can't really write anything narrative well, honestly. So I just stick to writing things that are in-universe stuff like, say, chat conversations or lab reports.
I think purple prose ends up actually tiring me out more, but I'm also more likely to stick with it to see if it improves--when sentences are too short and bland, I check out a lot faster. Purple prose has absolutely given me headaches before though.
I think for me there's purple prose and then there's Purple Prose, and one I can stand and will take over beige prose, while the other I'll probably nope out of. Probably it's like that for most people and everyone's limit is different.
i don't really write purple and i don't read much of it either like, purple prose can be poetic when done right but very overwrought when done wrong
