Have you ever had the desire to tell a story in a time that isn’t the one we’re in now? Maybe a whimsical romance set in a fantastical past or a thrilling horror story set in the far future. It doesn’t just make you wonder if the two lovers in Victorian London will find one another or if Lt. Chip Beefsteak will defeat the mutinous faction aboard the massive colony spaceship bound for a new home. It also makes you think more about life and people in those Victorian era places

Dear Purposeful Prose, I love using flowing, poetic language. It’s part of my style as a writer. Because of that, I like using a lot of figurative language: metaphors, similes, personification, alliteration, anything. My beta readers don’t like this kind of language as much as I do, and they say it comes off as “stilted” and that it takes them out of the story. I thought this had to do with taste, but I asked a friend who does like poetry, and she agreed. Now, I’m questioning

Dear Purposeful Prose, For as long as I’ve been writing, I haven’t always given much thought to character descriptions. I feel like they’re never as important to my stories, so I allow the character’s actions to do the describing for me. Is this the wrong approach? Should I be doing something else? There should be balance between descriptions and story progression. They impact one another and, sometimes, coexist. One approach isn’t necessarily “wrong”. An evocative descripti