Blogging from A to Z Challenge: Purple Prose

Hello and welcome to the Focused on Story Blog. Every day this month I'm blogging a new word for all you Word Nerds during the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge. Join me as we journey through the alphabet!!

~logophile~

a lover of words, Dictionary.com

Another name for a logophile is Word Nerd. Do you agree? This whole month  Focused on Story is for logophiles. In the beginning of this challenge, I explained my theme—I’ll share words that have caught my attention, words that fascinate me, words that roll off the tongue, words that make a sound (crackle), and words that have been in my vocabulary for one reason or another which I will explain. Many of the words are new-to-me. Hopefully, by including them in this survey of words, my vocabulary will expand and perhaps, yours will too.

 I came across logophile in an article by K.M. Weiland on her website, Helping Writers Become Authors. She called herself a logophile and addressed Fellow Logophiles. She cautioned against using purple prose in our writing. She defines purple prose as “an elaborate, gauche costume that, more often than not, simply covers up a lack of depth in the story itself.”

Because we love words, sometimes we are carried away with "elegant" words and forget to use words to match our voice. She calls a story “overblown” when trying to impress readers with our vocabulary.

“Stories do not exist to showcase words. Rather, words exist to tell stories.” K.M. Weiland

It is my hope, when you learn a new word this month on this blog, when you use it in your article or story, it will be appropriate and not sound pretentious.

Click here to read the entire article. I’m a subscriber to her blog because she is so clear with her tips on improving writing. 

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Are you a Word Nerd? If so, why? Please leave a comment below. I love meeting readers.

Let's get together on Facebook. Like my author page and I'll like you back! Click here to visit the J.Q. Rose author page. Thank you.

Click here for the MASTER LIST

of all participants who signed up

for the #AtoZchallenge 2018.

Insecure Writers Support Group: Writer's Re-writing Tips

Internet Writers Support Group --What is IWSG? Founder of IWSG and author Alex J Cavanaugh explains the group's purpose is "to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!" 

The group blogs the first Wednesday of every month, The list of bloggers is always available so you can hop around to the author blogs filled with humor, advice, and thought provoking posts. You can find the list of participants at Alex's IWSG page.  

Writer's Re-writing Tips by J. Q. Rose

I was thrilled to finish the first draft of my mystery work-in-progress last week. 

Now begins the fun part, the re-writing.  

There is no great writing, only great rewriting.Justice Brandeis 

Actually I enjoy slogging through the manuscript and "fixing" it up, slashing sentences, paragraphs, or even full scenes. adding the motivation or the one touch that pulls the heart strings of the reader, and finding that perfect verb to illuminate the action. Ah, what joy.

Now that I am ready to finish this third mystery, I would like to learn methods other writers do when re-writing their manuscripts. 

What tips can you share with us to help make the re-writing more productive?

• Do you read through without making any changes to get the flow or pacing of the story? Find the muddle in the middle?
• Do you begin by fixing  grammar errors and typos?
• When do you check if characters and descriptions of locations are consistent throughout the entire story? 
• Do you perform all these steps in one reading?
• Do you keep each chapter separate and save it to its own file in MS Word? Or do you write all the chapters in one file? Or do you use a writer's helper like Scrivener to keep track of chapters, scenes, characters, etc

What nugget of information can you share with us? Please leave a comment below.  We'd appreciate all the help we can get!

Thank you!