Sincere apologies to all Purple Prose Protesters… I’m using a lot of purple prose in the following to punch up the examples. A blog against Purple Prose will follow sometime soon.

One of my mentors in the Seton Hill M.A. program for Writing Popular Fiction encouraged mentees and other writing students to be cautious of “Floating Body Parts” (FBPs). When I recently sought a list of FBPs as examples, Googling “Floating Body Parts”, the search engine came up with links to gruesome crimes but nothing related to writing.

So, given lack of public information on FBP’s, I thought I’d share what they are, and why a writer should avoid them.

A Floating Body Part is where the action is given to the body part rather than the person, in a way that disembodies the body part. For example:

“His eyes roamed up and down her body.”

Ewww…like gooey marbles–creepy! The eyeballs have the action, not the character.

So how would you fix this?

“He gazed up and down her body.”

Not good writing, but at least it’s no longer an action scene from a horror flick. Here’s another example of an FBP:

“Her eyes fell to the floor.”

Five-second rule—grab ‘em fast! This can easily be fixed with something like,“She looked at the floor”, giving the action to the character and not her eyes, while also lessening the over-dramatization of her action.

“Her fingers drummed a restless beat on the bar’s counter.”

FBP? Yup, fingers drumming while she was out on the dance floor with the cowboy locking lips. Instead:

“She drummed a restless beat on the bar’s counter with her fingers.”

“with her fingers.” may not even be necessary, depending on the context. The reader is likely to assume it’s with her fingers, not her head, her boobs, or her toes, unless she’s at a Chinese restaurant and has access to chopsticks.

“Her hand slid between the sheets.”

While she was in the kitchen, brewing coffee. Instead:

“She slid her hand beneath the sheets.”

What do you think of “Her legs collapsed beneath her.”, or “Her cheeks flushed.”, or “Her voice faltered.” Are these FBPs? No. Having one’s legs collapse implies one doesn’t have control of them. Same with flushing cheeks and a faltering voice. In these cases, the body part really is disengaged from (although still attached to) the character. To write, “She faltered her voice.” would be ridiculous. In a deep subconscious sense it might be accurate, but not likely, in terms of the story.

How about the following example?

[From the heroine’s POV] “They reached for the last French fry at the same time. He released it, and then his fingers trailed up her arm.”

From the hero’s point of view, this would definitely be a FBP. “He trailed his fingers up her arm.” would be better. But this is in the heroine’s point of view, so is it a FBP? You could say the heroine is very aware of his fingers trailing up her arm. His fingers might be a focal point. A part of his body she’s very aware of; the part that is touching her, wreaking havoc with her senses. I’d argue the writer could get more emotion out of the scene if the heroine relates the sensation to the hero, and not his fingers:

“They reached for the last French fry at the same time. He let go and then her arm tingled as he traced a path along it with his fingers.”

Isn’t there more sensuality when the heroine perceives it’s the hero trailing his fingers up her arm then when his fingers have the action? (Note that her arm tingling would be like her foot twitching, her face flushing. Uncontrollable, therefore not “She tingled her arm.”)

Here are a few more (really bad) fun examples. How would you fix them?

His eyes roamed the room.

His lips nibbled her neck.

She wanted to leave, but his eyes held her.

Her hands rose to cover her breasts.

His eyebrows jumped in surprise.

Purple prosey, I know, all of it. But it helps get the message out about FBPs. You want your action to be that of the hero, heroine, villain, and others… not their dismembered body parts.