Edits of Argon: A field guide to identifying and killing purple prose

[scribal_goddess]

 As a veteran of MANY online discussions of books – sporking, critiques, writing groups, what have you – I see a lot of people who seem to think that ‘purple prose’ refers to any time anyone uses a word that is at all descriptive or uncommon. I see the accusation leveled at technical terms, at descriptions, and at people who just happen to have a vocabulary, or who made an effort to use words that aren’t common in modern writing, but which were perfectly normal in a historical setting.

So I’ve chosen to find the most egregious example of purple prose in the internet’s collective consciousness and go through it to illustrate exactly what purple prose is: using vocabulary without actually caring what it means, specifically to take out the reader’s kneecaps.

I give you: Quill’s line edits of The Eye of Argon, by Jim Theis.

The weather beaten trail wound ahead into the dust racked climes of the baren[sic] land which dominates large portions of the Norgolian empire.

The first sentence is just a warm-up, people. Let me pick out two words that are causing confusion right away.

Climes: Think of this word as short for “climate.” Because that is the entire definition according to dictionary.com. However, it’s plural, and it’s a phrase that seems to be endemic to poetry and works written or set in the 18th and 19th century.

Racked: As spelled, this means “hung up on a rack,” like shirts at a store, but Theis means Wracked, as in “storm wracked coast.” It denotes damage and destruction that is extremely incongruous with dust, and the entire rest of the opening scene, were the weather is doing absolutely nothing.

I would honestly cut… most of these sentences and condense to the action, personally, but let’s say I want to rewrite this because I need the word count.

The weather-beaten trail wound ahead through the barren, dusty land, as it did through most of the Norgolian Empire.

I kept every detail that was accurate, and removed the phrases that sounded like a social studies report on the Norgolian empire: climate, dusty and barren, major export, sensationalism…
 

Age worn hoof prints smothered by the sifting[sic] sands of time shone dully against the dust splattered crust of earth.

Several of these juxtapositions could work: smothered by sand evokes a nice mental image, and both ‘shone dully’ and ‘dust-splattered’ could be an intriguing use of an oxymoron, due to dust being dry and splattered usually meaning something is wet. However, there is no reason for the hoof prints to shine on a dusty road, (or for them to be visible.) Also, Theis has apparently typo’d his way into another vocabulary lesson.

Sifting: To sift is to filter through sieves. Theis means “shifting” since that’s already a pretty cliché phrase.

The hoof prints ahead of Grignr were slowly being erased by the coarse and crumbly dirt that blew around his horse’s feet. The dust-choked air was smothering.

There was so much repetition in this sentence, after I dealt with the first one, that I gave up and brought the focus to our hero (for a given value of hero) and broke up the sentence into two parts. I wanted to keep at least one of the so-called purple prose words in there, while actually making the hoof prints related to the first sentence and actually relevant to setting the scenery.

I’m also weak to alliteration like a Charizard is weak to hydro pump.

The tireless sun cast its parching rays of incandescense[sic] from overhead, half way through its daily revolution.

Vive la France! Ahem. Most of these words are used semi-appropriately. I have a minor science nitpick in that the Earth revolves around the sun, rather than the sun doing any revolving, but even if Jim Theis knew that I guess I can’t expect Grignr to.

Incandescence: This is specifically light from heat – you might know it from incandescent bulbs. No problem here.

Parching: Extreme drying – again, this is fine mechanically.

Additionally, I’m not going to pick on the anthropomorphization of the sun with the word tireless – it’s a stylistic choice. It’s the combination of all of these elements that’s overdone, so I say pick two, and maybe swap the verb (cast) to something that is more common.

The parching rays of the sun beat down from directly overhead, incandescent and ceaseless.

I swapped out tireless for something that had a better sound with the rest of the sentence, and used a less confusing, more reading-out-loud friendly structure. We don’t need the “halfway through it’s daily revolution,” to get across that it’s close to solar noon.

Small rodents scampered about, occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives.

If you go through the link you will find that this story has an unsettling preoccupation with rats. Pretty much nothing in this sentence is necessary, and the only word here that is specifically worth looking at is dismal, which usually connotes “dreary, miserable, and probably wet,” so it really does not go with this bone dry scene. Let’s make the rodents somewhat useful.

A small rodent scampered across the path before his horse, and Grignr looked up.

Now we’re officially done with the setting and on to the action.

Dust sprayed over three heaving mounts in blinding clouds, while they bore the burdensome cargoes of their struggling overseers.

Theis cannot decide how moist this environment is, can he? Let’s work with the word connotation and denotation clash.

Sprayed: Technically not bad, despite the fact that it’s usually used for liquid.

Burdensome: Dictionary.com lists this as “oppressively heavy,” which I guess matches up thematically with the overseers. It’s just… a bulky word in a paragraph full of bulky words. In a novella full of bulky words. More importantly, it’s a complicated way to say that the riders of the horses are heavy, and… apparently struggling to stay on at this speed. The detail is really not necessary here when you’re speeding up towards a fight scene.

He heard a rumble, and a plume of dust sprayed out of the pass ahead of him. Out of the blinding cloud three horses and their armored, shouting riders galloped.

Another thing, when afraid your prose is purple: cut the sentences up into shorter, less even chunks. It helps you figure out which words you actually like, and also it keeps your sentences from eating their own tails.

“Prepare to embrace your creators in the stygian haunts of hell, barbarian”, gasped the first soldier.

And we’re back on Theis’ bullshit.

Stygian: dark, gloomy, infernal, hellish… relating to the river styx and the ancient Greek underworld. We can assume from this that Norgolia is on earth, and my vote is that its north of Mongolia.

Haunts: When used as a place instead of a thing, it connotes a location where people linger or hang out, usually for nefarious purposes. Assuming that we’re more or less following a Hellenistic understanding of hell, it wouldn’t be that bad in a completely different sentence.

Gasped: This usually means that the speaker is out of breath. As a note, don’t contradict the actual dialogue with your dialogue tag – this is a long sentence to gasp out, and the soldiers are not given any sort of consistent reason that they would be out of breath while their horses gallop.

As a very, very special note – “said” is perfectly fine to use as a dialogue tag. Epithets, like “the first soldier” are also fine to use when there isn’t something that fits more smoothly, like a name or pronoun. Since Grignr doesn’t know these guys, “The first soldier” is fine.

The lead soldier drew his sword. “Prepare to be cast into the depths of hell, barbarian scum!”

Focusing on insults and not flowery phrases makes fighting dialogue sound a lot more natural, even when you’re working on what is essentially a Conan the Barbarian fanfic on steroids, and no one has ever talked like that, or ever will. The point is, they could, fluidly and easily, and without delaying attacking Grignr for his off-page crimes.

Lastly, punctuation belongs inside the quotation marks at the end of this dialogue.

“Only after you have kissed the fleeting stead of death, wretch!” returned Grignr.

This is actually the first sentence in this entire novella where I have zero clue exactly what Theis meant.

Fleeting: Passing swiftly. What is passing swiftly? We don’t know.

Stead: There are options on this one. In conjunction with fleeting, I want to say “steed” as in horse, which means that Grignr wants the soldier to kiss death’s horse. However, an old meaning of stead is ‘place or locality’ (think homestead) so… the soldier might be kissing death’s fast house? Or, a more recognizeable take, this could be the equivalent of ‘instead’ as in you do something instead of something, or “in its stead.” Which leaves me wondering if Grignr actually is fluent in Norgolian.

… Or it could be steel? Referring to Grignr’s sword? But that means that ‘fleeting’ makes no sense.

I wonder what sort of correspondence courses they have for learning Norgolian. No matter what language you’re writing in, ‘returned’ is one of the clunkiest dialogue tags I’ve ever seen. In all cases, ‘replied’ would be better, but to actually use dialogue tags that effectively, chose something that actually provides information on the emotions or tone of voice, especially when the punctuation isn’t already doing that for you.

“You’ll kiss death’s feet first,” Grignr snarled, readying his sword.

Grignr needs to reply for us to keep this scene rolling as intended, but if you know what he meant to say, that makes one of us. It has to be a taunt. It has to have something to do with the mortal battle our Conan knockoff is about to fight. It has to be quick to fit his personality and my limited patience.

There is a lot more to read in The Eye of Argon, and I don’t recommend using a reading of the manuscript as a drinking game, because your liver won’t like it. (It does make a funny party game without any alcohol involved though – keep score of when people have to stop reading aloud because they’re laughing.) This is, however, where I throw in the towel. Hopefully you now know what purple prose looks like, and why it’s not using large words, it’s misapplying them. If nothing else, try some editing of Jim Theis’ lovechild with a thesaurus just to flex some editing muscles or get a laugh.

(Apologies… thanks… condolences? To Jim Theis, whoever you are, for writing this very educational novella, and thanks to dictionary dot com for being the top google search result for “climes definition.”)

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