You're Not Describing, You're Purple Prosing

I know prosing isn't a word, but just deal with it for a few seconds while you read this article. Now, with that out of the way, let me do my obligatory introduction. 

All writers have a duty to show, not only a good story, but an amazing world to the readers. The world needs to jump off the pages and caress the readers minds with lovely images that they will keep in their souls until Death calls them back to the never ending oblivion that is the end of their lives...

That is not describing what you need to do, that was a bunch of pointless description that had terrible grammar. For whatever reason writers, especially of the SF/F and romance genres, thinks that accurate descriptions need to be long and poetic. Now this is fine if you're like Shannon Hale, and your prose is naturally poetic, but even Shannon Hale has enough reign over her writing in order to keep it to the point. Me and at least an eighth of the human population just doesn't understand poetry or straight up doesn't like it. So instead of reading poetry, we read other mediums of fantasy telling. When people like you shove in all your glittery, fancy, and down right obnoxious descriptions down our throats it makes us upset. We shove poetry to the side for a reason, don't make us read any more of it.

Dislike of poetry aside, there's another valid reason; because my opinion does matter that's what popular culture has taught me. When you have all the flowery descriptions of certain characters, you immediately have seasoned readers hating that character. That poor character probably just popped up on the page, but when you're describing her like this: "Skin as dark as chocolate and eyes as brown as a fawn. Her black curls bounced against her shoulders like playful snakes, just begging to be pet and played with. Her smile was wide and the adorably small teeth were as white as the moon, and had their own particular shine that made Prince Leopold's heart soar..."

Now, having read that, don't you get a distinct impression of her? I don't know about you, but I think that this...thing I created is a Mary-Sue. Heck, I don't know her backstory, her goals, or even her name and I hate her. And if I'm hating a character I literally made up on the fly, then I'm probably gonna hate the character that I've read about for at least three chapters and have had nothing but whimsy descriptions shoved in my eyes.

Of course not all descriptions are whimsy and happy. Some can be outright sad and melancholy, tales of tragic heroes dying in puddles of their own blood, or the death of a great and valiant creature that once ruled the skies. This is more common in death scenes, probably to make me care more about the character, ignoring the fact I've been reading about him since book one, page 45, eight books ago...

Now I could tell you a hundred more reasons why purple prose just doesn't work, but I'll finish with one of the best reasons why you shouldn't...

You ready?

People skip it. The six hours you spent flipping through the thesaurus for the longest word that still meant tiny, all to describe a magic girl, is gonna be skipped. And not because the person hates poetry, thinks the character is a Mary-Sue, or hates kids. It's probably a better bid to say that they just want to get onto the next bit of dialogue or action. Description in long never ending paragraphs is boring! If you've read Journey to the Center of the Earth, then you probably skipped the majority of the first chapter since it described the house. A house that, if memory serves me right, you don't ever see again. 

Basically, at the end of the day, just describe things the way they are. Don't try to overdue it, you're just gonna make people upset, or waste your own time because people will skip it.

Now I need to go finish reading the book I'll be reviewing....