While I’ve been enjoying the fun and sun in Hawaii (yes, I plan to rub that in every chance I get), Alex Keegan posted a comment to one of my July blog posts. I’m thinking this was an end-of-the-year google issue. Problem is, he posted to the old typepad blog, so it didn’t show up here. In the interest of fairness (and because I am too relaxed from my days of doing nothing to come up with a blog topic), I’ll reprint it here.

The issue on the old post was purple prose and Keegan’s view that we’d gone overboard with the spare-is-better view. He checked out the conversation and now offers this:

Hi, since I was quoted!

No, I don’t suggest a return to purple prose!

APPROPRIATE is the key word.

In general (but certainly not always) I suspect it’s better to use the strong verb or noun that doesn’t require the adverb or adjective; but then there are situations where emphasis, word-flow, and what I call “Napalm” require us to hold the reader’s hand above the heat. That may require longer ways to say things.

In one article I make the point that a “Cool, Dark, Guinness” is more interesting to the drinker than mere “Guinness” and I show how Andred Dubus, in the same story can be bald/terse and then switch to righ, modified writing. They key is the REASON for the modifiers.

Most beginners almost literally ADD modifiers as if these extra words somehow add depth or meaning or weight.

Intermediates “learn” to strip all those modifiers out.

Experienced writers don’t need to add or strip. If the modifiers are there it’s because it’s the best way, in the context, to express the point.

Alex

There you have it. Straight from Keegan without any interpretation from me.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 24th, 2005 at 7:04 am and is filed under About Authors, About Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.