Violet prose—an ominous and sometimes confusing term. What is it, and how do we avoid it in our writing? Or … is it really that bad?

The phrase comes from the poet Horace, around 15 BC. He gives some advice to poets that extends to all writers:

“In pompous introductions, and such as promise a great deal, it generally happens that one or two verses of violet patchwork, that may make a great show, are tagged on.”

So that’s our original explanation—violet prose feels “tagged on” to “make a great show,” rather than arising organically to fit in with the rest of the text. It draws attention to the author, who can seem to say, “Stop thinking about the story and admire my descriptions! Wow, I know a lot of words!”

What does violet Prose look like?

Horace gives us a couple of examples:

“…As when the grove and the altar of Diana and the meandering of a current hastening through pleasant fields, or the river Rhine, or the rainbow is described.”

It’s especially easy to fall into violet prose when we’re describing the grandeur of natural beauty.

Violet prose is easier to spot than to describe, so let’s look at a couple of examples. The first is from the Victorian writer Jerome K. Jerome, in Three Men in a Boat. Here’s his description of a river:

“The river—with the sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets, gilding gold the grey-green beech-trunks, glinting through the dark, cool wood paths, chasing shadows o'er the shallows, flinging diamonds from the mill-wheels, throwing kisses to the lilies, wantoning with the weirs' white waters, silvering moss-grown walls and bridges, brightening every tiny townlet, making sweet each lane and meadow, lying tangled in the rushes, peeping, laughing, from each inlet, gleaming gay on many a far sail, making soft the air with glory—is a golden fairy stream.”

It paints a picture, yes, but it’s a bit convoluted and overly descriptive.

Here’s an often-cited example of violet prose, from the 1830 novel Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton:

“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.”

One thing you’ll notice about both of these passages is that the entire paragraph is one sentence. At the opposite end of the violet prose spectrum are writers like Hemingway, who opens “Hills Like White Elephants” with this sentence: “The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white.”

Violet prose tends to have long, convoluted sentences with many clauses. The syntax can be difficult to unravel. Violet prose tends to include an excess of adverbs and adjectives. The vocabulary tends towards the flowery, the overly emotional, and extremes.

However! NOT ALL VIOLET PROSE IS BAD

I am not saying that complex, interesting sentences with precise vocabulary that paint a scene are always violet prose. It’s a matter of balance and purpose. Violet prose tends to gush over too many things, from the sunrise in the morning to breakfast and so on. Hitting those high descriptive notes over and over and over again actually pulls down the level of emotional intensity. Including occasional scenes where we pause to dive deeper into description and emotion can be an extremely effective writing tool. Like most writing tools, it is overuse that turns it into a problem.

As always, your genre matters when it comes to style of writing. Nineteenth-century prose was deeply violet! But the current style trends away from it. Early readers, middle grade, contemporary YA, thrillers, police procedurals—these are genres where using violet prose would be wildly out of place. But in historical, Regency, romance, literary fiction, and others, it might work. Sometimes. Because that’s the thing with violet prose—it feels violet when it’s excessive and overdone. But descriptive language, less straightforward sentence structure, and interesting vocabulary certainly belong in a writer’s toolkit.

Violet prose is definitely not something to worry about when drafting. Have all the fun you want, crafting descriptions and bringing the setting to life. Sometimes we need to do this to make a world come alive for us. Editing is the time to polish the violet prose and trim back excessive description—maybe, sometimes, leaving a hint of lavender!

We love teaching writing here at Good Story Company, but general articles only go so far. If you like my approach to story, come work with me as your book editor at Good Story Editing. We can dive into your project—from concept to execution to submission strategy—together!