Purple Prose

Spontaneous moments happen all the time in the classroom; they were something I thought I would miss when I started tutoring.

While we were editing out 'purple prose' in his creative writing, one of my students jumped out of his chair, fetched 'Jekyll and Hyde' off his bookshelf, and began reading the opening chapter of the novel to me.

We had a good laugh about this; then I tried to explain to him that conventions for writing had changed since the 19th century.

We ended up re-writing Stevenson's first paragraph for a modern readership. This wasn't in my lesson plan, but was enormously enjoyable! Looking forward to more of these moments in tutoring.