/lit/ - Literature

>>11006318
Eastern Canada, sadly. I'd love to move to Victoria some day. The weather is more temperate year-round.

>>10999985
o-oh, hey anon, it's me again. Might I take a stab at it? Go hard on me, because I do genuinely want to improve.

Elements of lyrical prose would involve things like vivid imagery, alliteration, and elements of a poetic meter. It's neither purple prose, nor terse prose, though terse prose is best used in conjunction with lyrical lines. Purple prose draws too much attention to itself by being excessive and overly ornate, which breaks the flow for the reader, and this can be jarring, because it formulates an unclear image in the reader's mind. Purple prose sentences can grow to the point of being difficult to understand, and it's pretentious to boot. See: writing with a thesaurus.

What I mean by terse would be sentences that are concise and tidy, more akin to a report, or a piece of news. Generally writers remove adverbs, and shorten phrases like "all of it" to "all" to rid themselves of superfluous words. Terse prose isn't necessarily the deficiency to the excesses of purple - which I've made it seem - since terse prose can be stilted and boring in the wrong hands, like the writer is scribbling a shopping list.

I'd suggest lyrical prose floats somewhere in between, like purple prose writers overshot their target, factoring in neither the weight of their arrow, nor the direction of the wind. Used in conjunction with more "lyrical" sentences, terse sentences contribute to the overall musical element of the piece; after all, staccato is also an element of musical articulation. What a writer ought to do, then, is mix simpler prose with more elaborate and evocative lines, in order not to overwhelm the reader and move the piece forward. Having an ear for rhythm and a knack for when to deploy certain sentences can also help the writer control the tempo, the flow of information. Hence, "poetic."

Readers sometimes need to read aloud to properly hear it.

I'm sick at the moment, and I haven't been sleeping well. Can you steep me some tea?