Too Much Description, Ellie? I thought That Was A Good Thing!
No, It's not, actually. When you describe, you'll obviously need to paint pictures of your setting and your characters. But too much can take away from the plot and make your story slow-paced, dull, and even stop the plot. So, what does Wikipedia have to say about it?
Wikipedia wrote: Purple prose is a term of literary criticism used to describe passages, or sometimes entire literary works, written in prose so overly extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself. Purple prose is sensually evocative beyond the requirements of its context.
So, you see, too much description can be a bad thing. One work I read and reviewed here on YWS had 12 paragraphs of describing a sort of temple the main character lived in, before the plot actually started. Another story I read started with a janitor of some sort of building cleaning up a murder scene. I wanted to know what happened to the dead boy on the ground, but he just spent the time describing what the janitor had to do to clean it up.
Your reader is an impatient person. You want them to care about the characters and the plot and not lose them on the first page when you start with a riveting moment and describe the setting.
So, how do you avoid Purple Prose? Break description up into little bits. If it is a spring day, and your main character is going outside to have a picnic on a hill range, and you are describing the view, maybe describe how the hills looked. Then have dialogue and action until she gets to the top of the hill, where you could describe the view. Or If your describing a person, maybe start out with the eye color and skin tone. After a few dialogue lines, add about her hair. Then a little later, describe her fashion style. Don't cram it into one paragraph.
I got this example of Purple Prose from Wikipedia. . .
Wikipedia wrote:A more recent author famous for purple prose is Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73), who begins his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the sentence:
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
It is often shortened to just "It was a dark and stormy night"
See? A lot of the information in that paragraph was completely unnecessary. Mr. Lytton could have easily written 'It was a dark and stormy night.' Then introduce his main characters. If he was determined to have that imformation in there, he should have spread out.
Well, That's all I have to say on the matter for right now. I hope I helped!
