What color is your writing? Blue, Purple or Beige?
A tear in a toga at the time of Horace (65-8 BCE) required a patch, and a purple patch stood out because of its color against a neutral background. Horace thought it was the perfect metaphor to describe a style of writing so flowery and ornate it drew attention to itself, often at the expense of the message in the writing. Purple patch evolved to Purple prose, now generally understood to mean writing that is overly ornate, a decoration. Hemingway said writing is architecture, not interior design.
And that led Hemingway to revolutionize writing, starting with The Sun Also Rises in 1926. Nothing extravagant or flashy: Beige. Beige writing does not rule out the use of metaphors or any other literary devices but uses them in moderation.
Blue writing lacks a storied history, and is a contemporary concept borrowed from color psychology, where blue represents calm, reasonable, rational communication. That does not mean it can’t be passionate.
Tom Clancy wrote “I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damn story.”
Good advice.
