Purple is the Enemy

He stretches out in the lush, green grass. His eyes sparkle in the golden sunlight like beautiful blue gemstones. A soft breeze brushes over the dips in the huge, rolling valley, kissing my cheeks and kicking my hair off my thin shoulders. The hills here are breathtaking in the springtime, like a never ending sea of the most astounding emerald water you'd ever see. He reaches a strong hand toward me, flashing a glittering, straight, white smile as his clean, off-gray sleeve waves in the wind.

"Don't be so uptight," he coos, his voice soothing and melodic in my ears. "Lay down."

"I couldn't possibly," I reply, turning away to hide the blush burning like fire on my cheeks. My knee-length turquoise sundress, with it's slightly tacky, but still endearing flower pattern, flutters against my legs like a graceful----

Okay, I'm gonna stop now. I can't keep writing like that.

Please tell me you see what's wrong with all that. Please.

It's PURPLE.

And no, I'm not referring to the color of the font. The writing itself is purple.

Now, if you've ever seen my blog, you can probably tell I'm a fan of the color purple. But purple prose is horrible. If you don't understand why, go back up to the top and read that crap I wrote again. Yeah. It's exhausting and awkward and...just ugh. The writing pipes are clogged with details. Overly flowery, overwritten details.

If you actually thought that snippet up top was good writing, please step away from the keyboard and douse yourself in ice water. Then you're welcome to come back.

So, how do you know if you've crossed the line into purple territory? It's actually not that hard to tell if you have. Do you get a headache reading it? If yes, you probably have purple writing.

On a serious note though, you're officially purple if:

-You use more than two adjectives in your descriptions.

Believe me when I say you only need one. Hell, you might not even need that. But if you really, really feel the need to use more, limit yourself to TWO. Any more than that and you've crossed the line.

-You describe every seam in the MC's clothes.

There's a very thin line between details and inconsequential crap. Weighing your reader down with a million unnecessary details is going to bore them half to death.

-Your writing is so flowery, it got a blue ribbon at the National Gardener's Convention.

For the love of all things good and pure, don't write things so flowery I've got to get my hedge clippers to see the actual story. I don't need a two paragraph info dump describing the love interest's eyes/hair/body/ANYTHING!

-You just wrote two whole pages and nothing really happened.

To quote the QueryShark, pare it down! Pare it down! Pare it down! If something important isn't happening, you don't need it. Though, this isn't really a sure sign that what you've written is purple, it does tell me it's unneeded. Throw it out. It's just weighing you down.

HAPPY WRITING, LOVELIES!