My real problem comes when I visualise a scene in my mind… Then don’t quite get it all out on the paper, or wordpress, or whatever I happen to be writting to, leaving a gaping hole that I quite possibly don’t see, because I still see the scene in my mind.

Now I know, I seriously doubt I’m in any danger of ever commiting this problem.

On the topic of possibly under done writing (ie. the polar opposite of purple prose) I refer you to my own writing. I’ve been struggling to try to strike a balance somewhere in the middle, but I’ve always kind of been a man of few words. I could always write well in English, I could just never meet a word limit.

3. Archaism The “forsoothery” of much High Fantasy may be nothing more than a reflection of the tendency – derived from William Morris and J.R.R. Tolkien – to conduct heroic matters in a Germanic tone of voice, and thereby to convey a sense of the dawn of the world. Attempts at the Saga Voice afflict almost all high fantasy, from Morris to Poul Anderson and to most recent writers of Genre Fantasy. Texts in Saga Voice are full of undigested morsels of “language”, but often in no way constitute a genuine attempt at conveying otherness. Where they do, as in the best of Anderson’s early work, it is because of a conscious attempt to go back to the sagas and make the imitation of their language personal and new.

Other sources for the effect of archaism in fantasy include the cod Orientalism of Lord Dunsany and others of the turn of the century, and even the Bible. Sometimes this is a deliberate piece of what Bertolt Brecht called the alienation effect; Dunsany, James Branch Cabell, Ernest Bramah and others are announcing, not entirely truthfully, that what they are telling us in this particular and peculiar way is a Story, and to be taken on Story’s terms. What can make later imitations of their language so silly is the absence of a sense of irony, and of the sense that language can have several meanings at once.

[Encyclopedia copyright 1997; "Diction" entry by John Clute and Roz Kaveney]

There’s not much that I can add except that badly-written high fantasy has the same problem with the same solution as ordinary purple prose.

If I want to say they had sex, I say they had sex. I don’t go out of my way to say they consummated their relationship with vigorous bonding in between sheets.

I actually find referring to sex to be a great case for purple prose . . . so long as it’s properly done, playing off of the English language’s tendency to have strange and amusing euphemisms for that act. (I love playing with the language and the readers’ expectations like that.)

I haven’t seen many examples of that – most of the time my friends try to impress everyone with their vocabulary and end up crafting horrible pieces.

But that can be a problem, come to think of it. Though me thinks it’s gotta be pretty rare.

Yes to the 2nd part. Reading tons and developing a style is a given.

Repeated gushing: annoyance, much? ;-)

Yeah, purple prose hurts, and it seems to be a crime committed in love scenes and romance novels a lot. If two words will do to describe a character’s hair, let’s use twenty words anyway, and we’ll mention hair or physique a lot and discuss them rhapsodically every time.