Tip No. 2: No Purple Prose

We all know how it goes: teachers persuade you to write with as much description and as many adverbs as possible, applauding those with the floweriest language and the most effluent passages but this is not the way to do it in the real world.
I have heard time and time again from people in and out of the publishing world that the best way to do it is as scarcely as possible: leave as much up to the reader's imagination as possible. Make them think a little. You'll notice that the books which follow the less is more rule tend to be of a much higher quality and it gives the reader a much wider scope.

This website: http://www2.localaccess.com/suthed/writing.htm - has plenty of examples of purple prose and I'm sure you can all see that the quality of the writing is hindered by the overuse of words in an attempt to sound smart.

There are so many advantages to not using purple prose - the simplicity of your writing will be more striking to the reader rather than tiresome to read. Don't be boring to your readers because no-one is the beneficiary there.

Try to avoid flowery language as much as possible, although in some circumstances it can work, to describe something particularly stunning. If used sparingly, it can create a decent effect in that it is so out of the ordinary in comparison to the rest of the story.

Lydia