Hi,
My name is Kristine (big surprise right?) and I've been making up stories since I can remember. I got into fan fiction when original series Star Trek fanzines were still popular (there now, I've dated myself) and tried writing original fiction while getting my English BA a while back. I stopped writing when I started living with a published writer and realized that, unless you are very talented, it can be VERY hard. It also didn't pay well enough to live on for most writers, and I didn't want to move back in with my parents. I still want to write and I am looking for my true voice. I have a tendency toward purple prose and info dumping that I am trying to force myself out of. Some of my latest practices are fan related fiction and can be read here if anyone is the vaguest bit interested:
http://kristine1967.livejournal.com/comments/criticism very welcome.
And now some information...Purple ProseDictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source
–noun
writing that calls attention to itself because of its obvious use of certain effects, as exaggerated sentiment or pathos, esp. in an attempt to enlist or manipulate the reader's sympathies. Writing full of ornate or flowery language. Ornate, flowery speech can also be referred to as purple prose.
Info Dump - the whole piece this is from is pretty funny and I found it at:
http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2006/04/29/3504.html -its by Strange Horizons editor Jed Hartman
...
“Infodump content types include the Backstory Historical, the Backstory Personal, and the Explanation Specialized (which has subtypes Scientific, Magical, and so on for other fields of human endeavor). Infodump delivery mechanisms include Faux Dialogue Naive (in which one character explains something to another character designed to be the reader-identification character, a character who doesn’t have the necessary background and thus must have it explained to them), Faux Dialogue Redundant (in which one character explains something to another character who knows it already, as I am doing now), Faux Thought Redundant (in which a character thinks something to themselves that they already know), and Narrative.”
“And are there specialized techniques for delivering infodumps?”
“A great many, Doctor,” I said, gathering confidence. “For example, as you know, there is the famous ‘As you know, Bob’ introductory phrase. Another example: one character may interrupt to ask another character questions, avoiding the problem of an infodump turning into one gigantic endless paragraph.” Then, too, I thought, pieces of an infodump may be provided using different delivery mechanisms, again breaking it up. “I trust that you read that bit of narrative and thus that I don’t need to rep—”
“Yes, yes. Now, quickly, before our reader gets bored and turns the page: tell me the reasons that authors use infodumps.”
“That one is almost too easy, Doctor; like all members of our society born in the past thirty years, I learned it while I was but a mere squalling babe. As the scriptures tell us (the scriptures you should be familiar with, having written them yourself): ‘Thou shalt provide the reader with all of the information needed to understand everything in the story.’ In the old days, before the advent of the Total Narrative Society, fiction sometimes contained ambiguous or unclear passages. These days, thanks to you and your colleagues, all fiction is completely clear. It may be, as some critics allege, that it has become a bit dull—”
“I leave it to History to judge the charge of dullness, my young friend. But what I really want to know is this: Can the infodump be done well? Think carefully before you answer; humanity’s future may depend upon it.”
I mused over all the infodumps I had encountered. As you know, self, I thought, so many of them are so bad! And in recent weeks, they had only gotten worse, with many stories in which my eyes had glazed over at paragraph after paragraph of poorly delivered backstory and quasi-scientific explanation. Furthermore, in many of those cases, the material presented wasn’t remotely necessary to the story; they were cases of the author being so enamored of their worldbuilding and ideas and research that they felt they had to stop the story to explain them to the reader.
And yet, I had to admit to myself, sometimes infodumps are presented well. The best infodumps I had seen were generally presented as narrative, told directly to the reader, without explicit attempts to disguise them as dialogue or thoughts. Then, too, sometimes they took the form of encyclopedia or dictionary entries, though that was a technique that could easily be overused.
