How Purple is Your Prose?

You can blame this post on Patti Abbott http://pattinase.blogspot.com/ Why blame Patti? Because she was asking about dumbest toys ever made and I mentioned Click Clacks, which made me wonder how in the heck do you describe this toy to people who never saw it...them?

Two hard plastic balls on a string (and yes, the "Ding a Ling" song is strolling through my head) There was a ring on the string that you slid on your finger much like a yo-yo then you waved your hand up and down so the balls clicked and clacked above and below your hand. Stupid fad toy popular in the early seventies.

I worked in the toy department at Grants and they were a big seller, not to mention that everyone in the store had a set they played with when things were quiet. All through the store you could hear click - clack, click - clack, ow, ow, ow, damn! Everyone who played with them had bruised arms, sore wrists and even a black eye or two. This toy would never make it on the market today. And yet, we kept playing with them, click-clacking away trying to see how long we could keep them going. Maybe if the string had been elastic and prone to breaking like the paddle balls, we would have given up quicker.

And still the description doesn't do justice to the beautifully colored orbs or capture the obsessed click-clacking that went along with the toy.

And to bring this back to writing, click-clacks could be used as weapons, or a passing thought by a woman who'd like nothing more than to use her husbands balls like a set of click-clacks or turned into that popular seventies song "silver balls hanging on a string, I think it was my ding-a-ling". Sometimes I miss the "good old days".

Oh yes, and don't forget Patti's Wal-Mart flash challenge on Monday. If you'd like to join in on the fun you can check out the details here http://pattinase.blogspot.com/2009/10/new-flash-fiction-challenge.html And if you really want description woes Patti's Wal-Mart link is a humdinger http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/ The written word cannot do these people justice, believe me, I've been struggling with it. You need a picture just to prove that you didn't make up some of those outfits.

So, how purpley do you allow your prose to get? Do you like using a lot of description when you're writing or do you just trim it down to the bone and let the reader's imagination do the work?