Fortnightly Writing Competition - Purple (closed)

Started by budgerigar, Fri 20/04/2012 09:18:56

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budgerigar

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrentsâ€"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.
--Paul Clifford, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Your purple prose just gives you away...
-- Unbelievable, EMF


Purple prose kind of gets a bad name, usually used to describe overwrought passages found in trashy romance novels, when it is actually overwrought passages found in *any* material  ;D

The nuts and bolts, according to Ye Olde Wikipædia:
QuotePurple prose is a term of literary criticism used to describe passages, or sometimes entire literary works, written in prose so extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself. Purple prose is sensually evocative beyond the requirements of its context. It also refers to writing that employs certain rhetorical effects such as exaggerated sentiment or pathos in an attempt to manipulate a reader's response.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it: cobble together some violet verse. The topic and just about everything else is at your discretion. Take a mundane activity and pump up the plum factor- perhaps describe in near Shiva-like levels of creation and destruction how to make a birthday cake. Possibly challenge yourself to go over the top and make the longest lilac-laden sentence you can craft.

Make it silly, make it dramatic, but most importantly... make it purple.

I tried to poke some pixels into a prize for the author who most lets the aubergine flow:

(If you want. No obligation, really. This is as close to a "trophy" as i can get.)

Note: Extra credit given for mentioning or referencing something purple in story.

CaptainD

Cool idea.  I shall endeavor to craft prose of a purple nature!
 

budgerigar

*relaxes to the sound of crickets softly chirping*

(Still have one more week!  ;))

Sane Co.

I'm working, I'm working. I should have it done around Tuesday.
EDIT: I've got something, should have it up soon.


Sane Co.

She happily sat on the slightly decayed tree stump, holding a ceramic bowl with flowers engraved and painted so precariously that it looked like it was trying to look real but was failing miserably and was noticeably fake. She slipped her silver spoon, which had the words "Made in Mordor" inscribed into it, so delicately into her precisely aged and separated milk that it barely left a soft ripple. She sat with her left leg over her right in such a way to make her look younger, as if time had reversed itself, as she slipped the silver piece of expensive cutlery between her juicy red lips into her well rounded mouth, allowing the curdled milk to slowly dissolve there.
        A large beast held up by a single strand of fine, smooth silk, softly lowered it's way down by the girl's slender side. She daintily continued to consume her tasty morsel, until she noticed the disgusting, eight-legged, bloodsucking creature, (More commonly called a lawyer.) glaring at her. She dropped the victorian-style bowl, so carefully carved and colored, shattering with a loud "CRASH!", which reverberated throughout the valley, into thousands of tiny pieces. She got up screaming like a cat yowling like a banshee trying to imitate a cat yowling... etc. and ran in the direction the North Star faces when it lies to the north, to her monolithic house. She trampled over carefully tended tulips so they touched the ground like two lips pressed forcefully against themselves, when two lovers kiss with their very own two lips. She decided that she never didn't not want to go back to the stump.
Moral: Purple writing can ruin a fairy tale, a horror story, and something that was never intended to be funny but is anyways. Also, all fairy tales require a moral.

Hope you liked it, if you couldn't tell it was "little miss muffet" to include purple writing.
By the way two lips, wait, no... tulips are purple.  ;)

Eric

I'm hoping to get something in, but I have dissertation writing obligations that will keep me up all night tonight. When is the actual deadline again?

Eric

Here's my entry, if it's not too late!

Harold wrapped her in the thick coils of his arms and held her--the long-desired object of his turgid passion, Janice--against the broad expanse of his chest. Her eyes were green and shimmered, like the dew-covered green grass of early morning spring that proves too thick for the lawnmower blade so that you have to flip the mower and clean out the wet grass with a stick. Her red lips contrasted with her alabaster skin like blood rupturing from a freshly stabbed polar bear. Her cheekbones were high, and she blushed, as though she'd been caught in some illicit act, like pantsing a priest mid-mass.

Harold guided his hand through her auburn hair, his fingers plowing the farrow field of follicles, ignoring the occasional flake from dry scalp and tossing it aside like a stone before the tiller. His lip quivered like a trampoline with stretched springs, and her lips parted with the hot warm expectancy of a bag of freshly popped microwave popcorn slathered with artificial butter. She felt his manliness against her, and he knew that she could feel it, suddenly overcome by pangs of self-consciousness and pulling back, but then realizing that pulling back made him more self-conscious and so pressing forward again, which caused him to be the most self-conscious he possibly could, slowly humping at her like a turbine whose power had been recently disconnected.

He moved his face close to hers and breathed in. She smelled of flowers, generic flowers, like the kind that a florist might install in a bouquet to round out the two or three expensive flowers that you were really paying for, and expected more of, but this will have to do because it's six in the evening on Valentine's Day and this is all they have left. Her warm breath fell against him in waves, with the same undulating power as an obssesive compulsive repeatedly opening an oven to check on a baking cake, not realizing that every time they open the oven, all of that heat is going to get out, and the cake will be ruined anyway. His hands trembled as he held her, like a starving orphan who has been inexplicably dropped off in Buffalo in January, because, seriously, why would you do that. His moist palm found the soft small of her back, the shallow impression like a pit dug for an outdoor swimming pool, but not deeply enough, and the building inspector insists you start over.

He thought back to when he'd first met her, that wonderful day on campus when she came striding across the quad, the sun shining rays down on her like a million spotlights, or maybe just twelve. He'd faltered in speaking to her that day, his words slow to come, and thick in his mouth, sounding as though he were gargling flan instead of speaking English. She'd seen through his nervousness that day, like a two-way mirror. Or is it a one-way mirror? Harold could never remember, but she was definitely the kind of mirror that one person could see through, and the other couldn't. Or was she on one side of the mirror and he on the other? He wondered if the metaphor was failing to work, like Steve, that shitty waiter at Applebee's.

"Janice," he whispered. "Oh Janice, oh Janice." But there was no reply, because sometime between Harold contemplating yardwork and reliving the experience of his earlier meal at Applebee's, Janice had grown tired of waiting for the action to begin, dressed, written Harold a note, left, walked down the block, attempted to purchase a new MetroCard, had her debit card rejected, phoned the bank to find they'd put a security hold on it, remedied the security hold, bought the MetroCard, ridden the subway home, and made a bowl of instant chicken noodle soup, which, though Harold didn't know this, she was then heartily enjoying while watching an unexpected late-night rerun of 'Mama's Family.'

"Drat and bother," muttered Harold, sinking into the rough cotton of too-few thread count sheets. For while Janice had vanished like the existence of powdery white dog shit, his turgid passion remained, like a Christmas present under the tree for a divorced parent whose car will never appear in the driveway.

Sane Co.

Cool, I liked it. It was pretty funny.

Sane Co.

Bump!
I think that we should start voting now. The deadline was may fourth. All in favor say I or Ai or Aye or Eye.

Sane Co.


Eric

I vote aye. I guess we've lost budgerigar.

Also, my entry was apparently in two days after the deadline, so I'm not even sure if a vote is required. From where I sit, it looks like a win for Sane Co.!

Sane Co.

But the deadline hardly matters, as we can see from a lack of voting.

Eric

We are like the sad dejected corner of competitions. Without pretty pictures, nobody likes us.  :~(

Ponch

Sadly, I think the forums relaunch stole all the attention from this contest. It had a fun theme, but I never noticed it until it was too late.

I vote for Sane Co. because his story was both funny and submitted before the deadline.  ;)

Eric


Sane Co.


budgerigar

Apologies for being woefully negligent of my duties  :-[

Indeed, we appear to have a victor:
Sane Co.!
Congrats on a job well done (and under the deadline, too!) The reins are yours, sir.

Also, a special thumbs-up to Eric for making me cringe throughout his piece. Excellent!

Eric


Sane Co.

I'll try to have something by today or tommorow.

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