The Overwritten Novel: How to Identify & Fix Purple Prose in Your Novel

By Janice Hardy

Be wary of going too far and turning a good sentence (or scene) into an overwritten mess. 

The term "purple prose" has been around as long as I've been writing, and chances are you've heard it too. 

If you're unfamiliar with the term, purple or flowery prose is so filled with adjectives and adverbs, similes and metaphors, that it screams "Hey look! I'm fancy writing" and distracts readers from the actual story. You often need a thesaurus just to read it.

Overwritten text is trying too hard to sound "written" or trying to explain too much. For example, a sentence that uses fifteen words when three is enough, and half of them are adjectives. Or a sentence that explains every single step in a task that doesn't need it. 

If you ever thought to yourself, "Yeah, I get it, he was angry, move on" then you probably read an overwritten passage.

Overwriting bloats a novel and usually kills the pacing and narrative drive, because the focus is on the description, not the action. Even when what you're describing is action.

Intuiting Your Character: A Guided Imagery Exercise

By Bonnie Randall 

Part of the How They Do It Series (Contributing Author)

During a recent retreat, I had the pleasure of participating in a guided imagery which, through symbolic interpretation, offered insight which I immediately wanted to apply to fiction characters I have created, past and present.

Directions: In order to partake in this exercise, you must be willing to fully immerse yourself into becoming your character. In other words, when faced with the following series of questions, do NOT answer with what you think, but rather write down—in as much detail as possible—the FIRST AND MORE INTUITIVE IMPRESSION your character receives after being faced with each of the following scenarios:

Now let’s start: