#purple prose

ryannorth:

cookingwithroxy:

phantomchick:

onion-souls:

onion-souls:

tilthat:

TIL that Edward Bulwer-Lytton - known as the ‘worst writer in history’ - coined the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword”

viareddit.com

He’s really not that bad, people are just mean

People make fun of “It was a dark and stormy night,” but you know what? He fucking established the scene in seven words. He didn’t prattle on for thirty pages about the fucking wallpaper, like some Victorians could.

“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 straight up tells you what’s up. Here’s the weather, here’s the setting, God forbid you set a tone

Have you ever tried reading a Don DeLillo novel

Salty literature tumblr is a niche I live for

I reblogged this before, but fuck it. The man invented a phrase so good that it became overused by people echoing him. That’s not a sign of a bad writer.

It was a short and salty post

Literally one of the most acclaimed poems, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, twists this phrase as an opening and nobody complained then. Once upon a midnight dreary is literally it was a dark and stormy night.

Also how tf can you claim anything thats 7 words is purple prose unless it should be a single word. The only acceptable way to call 7 words purple prose is like “the billowing sacks of harried, laborous membranes” instead of heaving lungs or some other sht like that.

typhoidmeri:

dizzy-redhead:

geekandmisandry:

someoneintheshadow446:

catsfeminismandatla:

geekandmisandry:

laughlikesomethingbroken:

thatgirlonstage:

laughlikesomethingbroken:

laughlikesomethingbroken:

wearevengeancenow:

the-thorster:

fozmeadows:

These horrific, sexist, racist paragraphs - screenshotted and shared for posterity by James Smythe, to whom we are all indebted - are the work of one Liam O’Flynn, a writer and English teacher. Evidently, they come from his book Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English, and are intended as examples of good writing.

UM.

Dear white male writers: DO NOT DO THIS SHIT. IT IS SUPER GROSS AND FETISHISTIC AND ALSO TERRIBLE WRITING. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS. 

Like I just. “Her virility-brown eyes -” WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN? How can you have an “Amazonian figure”ON a“wafer-thin body” when “figure” is a word that describe’s a body’s shape, and Amazonian means pretty much the DIRECT FUCKING OPPOSITE of “wafer-thin” in the first place?  What the shitting fuck does ANY of this mean, apart from “I am only nebulously familiar with the concept of women and completely at a loss if I can’t compare their various bodyparts to jewels, animals and footstuffs”?

STOP 

GO TO WRITING JAIL

GODIRECTLY TO WRITING JAIL, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200

tag yourself i’m the two beryl-green jewels in the snow

if her ears frame her nose do they like, grow directly beside her nose? how does she see from them? 

*facepalm*

“Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English“

lovers of english

oh my goddddddd

i can’t get over this fucking post

“I loved her nebulous, eden-green eyes which were a-sparkle with the ‘joie de vivre’. They were like two beryl-green jewels melted onto snow.”

1. what the fuck is joie de vivre

2.melted jewels?

3. beryl green

eden green:

WHICH ONE IS ITTTTTTTTT

@laughlikesomethingbroken “Joie de vivre” is a French phrase that literally translates to “joy of living”, while it IS one of those phrases that gets used in English in this context it is SO EXTRA AND UNNECESSARY OH MY GOD. Don’t use French to make yourself sound sophisticated when you’re NOT I don’t know where to even START. Curvilinear waist? Sugar candy-sweet? What the FUCK are seraph’s ears? Voguish clothes? What the everloving fuck is “constellation blue” supposed to mean??? Like forget the objectification, this writing is horrifying enough before we even get to the embedded sexism

seraph’s ears are ears that you can’t see bc they’re hidden behind her 6 wings

Oyster white teeth?

holy purple prose batman

Female writers do this too. Have you read a Mills and Boon novel? Have you read high school girls’ yaoi fanfics?

Uh oh, we were focusing too much on how a grown man is selling this shit and not enough shitting on teenage girls. Egalitarians here to put an end to that shit.

Guess what? I’ve read A LOT of Harlequin novels and a LOT of fanfic and I have never ever seen anything this horrible at description.

Also, none of those stories were trying to hold themselves up as high examples of the craft

<sb> well dammit, i guess i’m not going back to sleep.

[01:42] <sb> what a lovely morning!

 * sb makes coffee

<sb> a bony cackle escapes my haunted throat, etc

<b> heh.

<b> dreadful blood screeches down the ghastly walls of dread

<b> oops.

 * b is sleepy

<b> i over dreaded it.