Years ago when the Game of Thrones TV show was brand new and the “in” thing I saw a copy of the ‘A Game of Thrones’ novel at Wal Mart and bought it out of curiosity. From what I remember, I ended up dropping it because there was a segment where the author spent a few pages describing all the food on the table for a feast.
It really felt like I was wasting my time with that. There’s food on the table, I get it. I’m only interested in a few items to get the general gist of what is being served, I don’t need the whole menu rundown!
Interesting. I always thought purple prose was overly sentimental writing which is ornate, and tend to (ab)use adjectives, adverbs and metaphors that border on nonsense. It is a poor imitation of style and profundity without ever being distinct. For example:
I’m wearing dead cotton on my limbs and a blush of roses on my face – Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me
I don’t consider description and detail “purple prose”. I actually appreciate encyclopaedic detail. Melville’s genius in Moby Dick was that he became an encyclopaedia of whaling.
I think people tend to categorise passages they consider dull or irrelevant as purple prose when it’s not the case. And there’s this notion in genre fiction that everything in the book has to progress the plot. But plot does not equal the whole story. The dirty sock in the corner might be thematic
I don’t think you meant to reply to me, but I’m here now and must say Shatter Me is such a good example of purple prose and style over substance.
Like okay fine, it’s purpose is to be a romance not an actual dystopia. I, a crotchety scifi nerd, am not the target audience; teenage girls who like fluff and hot sensitive guys are the target audience. And the more I accept that the easier it is to recognize the appeal of the series to so many people.
But the writing was also just not good. It’s pre-booktok booktok writing, it exists to look pretty in out-of-context quotes and not much else.
