Purple prose examples

More rewrites, in response to some rather uninspired 'how to improve your purple prose' examples.

Original 'bad' (and pretty implausible) example:
He moved slowly, at length, and carefully on tip toes through the room with an entirely unnecessary gaze trained on the purple, wooden front door.

Suggested 'improved' version, which was then accused of being boring:
He moved carefully through the room, training his gaze on the door.

My attempt for that one:
He moved cautiously through the room, keeping a wary eye on the front door.

Second 'bad' example (which I can actually imagine appearing quite inoffensively in the middle of one of those first-person teenage books with a geeky narrator):
The proliferation of thoughts in my mind was causing me to experience brain freeze in the middle of science class.

Suggested 'improved' (and rather didactic) version:
My mind was crammed with too many thoughts, which is why I had a brain freeze moment in the middle of science class.

My attempt at making it more 'active':
My mind was buzzing as one possibility after another tumbled in and was rejected, and stuck there in the middle of science class I couldn't seem to get out a single coherent thought.

Writing v. cooking

It has eventually dawned on me that at least one of the reasons why I've spent far more time in the past weeks blogging about WW2 ration cookery on a private Facebook group (and doing a good deal of associated research in attempts to answer various questions that crop up: this archive article from 1943, for example, is the most extensive summary of how the system actually *functioned* that I came across, as opposed to the various 'How We Used to Live' educational pages or reminiscent anecdotes, simply because it was written for a contemporary American audience who wanted to see how the British were doing it before embarking on their own attempt!) is because I get far more feedback and approval as a result :-(

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