By James Hannibal @jamesrhannibal

Raise your hand if you love purple. I raised both my hands. I love purple. 

Purple is the color of joint ops in the U.S. military. That’s when the Army, Air Force, etc. pretend to play nice together. Purple is also the color of the dragon mascot of the longstanding U.S. Operations Security program I represented for a while in the stealth bomber community (to learn more about that program, read this declassified NSA document). Purple is the color of mountains majesty, the color Lydia sold, and the color of our Lord’s royal robe. So, I bristle when I hear “purple prose.” I picture text in this beautiful royal color and wonder, “Why not?” 

Aside from the negative association for an otherwise upstanding color, there are good reasons not to write purple prose, as there are good reasons behind all writing rules. This is part two of my attempt to bring out the “Why.” Last time, we examined two big ones—Passive Voice and Show-Don’t-Tell. This time we’ll hit three more—Purple Prose, Adverbs, and Exclamation Points.

Rule 3: Don’t Write Purple Prose

Have you ever cringed during a school play when a teen actor kills a scene with over-grand gestures and too much inflection? That’s the stage version of purple prose. Here’s a more direct example. 

“Bill looked out across the shiny sea, eyes tearing at the burnt-orange sun reflected off the glassy blue water. He thought of Charlotte—her flaxen hair, her ruby lips, her deep green eyes rimmed with gold.”

I could go on. I don’t want to.

The Why Not:

Clarity – Somewhere in all those adjectives, the reader is getting lost. As with passive voice, the extra words confuse the message. Using fewer, effective words brings clarity.

Melodrama/Showboating: Bill is earning the same eye-roll from the readers as the over-actors mentioned above. As a writer, your job is to communicate with style, not to show us how well you employ a thesaurus.

Forced Emotion: Purple prose may sound soft and flowery, but it feels like a crow bar, prying open the brain and beating the poor reader into emotional submission. If you want your readers to cry, build your characters and make them care. Don’t smack them in the tear ducts with a half-page paragraph about Mary’s deep depression, the sagging wallpaper, the soaking rain, and so on.

The Exception:

I call this the Rosemary Exception, and if you use it, you’d better be as good as Brian Bird. When Rosemary first appeared on When Calls the Heart, she gave us that overacting, purple prose vibe—on purpose. That was a single aspect of her character, and the writers tempered it with depth and made us fall in love. Can you use purple prose to achieve that affect? I’m not sure I can. 

Rule 4: Avoid Adverbs

“Larry ran quickly across the field, desperately trying to catch Sinclair. Sadly, he couldn’t close the distance. Finally he gave up and jogged to a halt. ‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ he shouted angrily.”

Oh dear.

The Why Not:

Clarity – Yet again, unnecessary words bog down the reader, hiding your message in a fog. The paragraph above is exaggerated, but I hope you get the picture. Let’s remove the adverbs and see what happens. 

“Larry ran across the field, trying to catch Sinclair. He couldn’t close the distance. He gave up and jogged to a halt. ‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ he shouted.”

Have we changed the meaning? No.

Crutch –Stripping out the adverbs above reveals that we’ve written a boring paragraph, leaning on the adverbs to amplifying our verbs. We also used “angrily” because of our fear that the reader would not feel Larry’s emotion from the scene as a whole. We can do better.

“Larry sprinted across the field, fighting to close the distance. But Sinclair had always been faster. ‘Enough!’ Panting, he slowed to a halt and leveled his Beretta. ‘Stop, Sinclair, or you’ll never run again.”

The Exception:

Efficiency – Adverbs are a form of telling. So, like telling, use them sparingly and only for efficiency. See the sentence before this one for an example.

Rule 5: No Exclamation Points!

Look at the last example using Larry above. “Enough!” To me, that’s a proper use of an exclamation point. I used it in dialogue, and the reader gets the character’s volume and knows Larry’s emotion from context. Let’s look at an example of poor exclamation point usage.

“I re-read the letter from the IRS and shook my head. I hated this! The abuse! The tyranny! Why wouldn’t they just leave me alone?!”

Sorry about that.

The Exception and the Why Not:

Narrative vs Dialogue – Exclamation points convey volume. That is all. And one exclamation point often does the trick even among two or three sentences. Your words, not your punctuation, convey emotion. Narrative has no volume, therefore it should have no exclamation points.

Forced Emotion – Exclamation points in narrative are the purple prose of punctuation. Instead of communicating emotion through the character’s context, action, and dialogue, you’re jamming an emotional crowbar into the reader’s brain again. Don’t do it.

Even when deep in the pov character’s mind, as in the first-person narrative example, do not use exclamation points in narrative. Discover the fine line between first-person narrative and internal monologue. And even in internal monologue, if you use an exclamation point, the character had better be screaming inside.

Notice the exclamation point stacked on the question mark at the end of the example. That one is right out. Cluttered punctuation confuses a message in the same way as cluttered words. Don’t do it.

Did you see the common thread in these five rules? In most cases the “why” touched in part upon clarity and clutter. In the simplest terms, our litany of writing rules are all about better communicating your message to the readers, and our message is vital to the world. So when we pound the desk and shout about purple prose and passive voice, we’re shouting out of love—for you, and for the readers who need to hear about Christ’s amazing grace.

See Part One here.

As a former stealth pilot, James R. Hannibal is no stranger to secrets and adventure. He has been shot at, locked up with surface to air missiles, and chased down a winding German road by an armed terrorist. He is a two-time Silver Falchion award-winner for his Section 13 mysteries for kids, a Thriller Award nominee for his Nick Baron covert ops series for adults, and a Selah Award finalist for his Christian CIA thriller, the Grypyhon Heist. James is a rare multi-sense synesthete. Want to know more? Visit JamesRHannibal.com.