The reader's tolerance of style

[ScipioSmith]

One thing I want to attempt, in my multiple POV characters, is to try and make the textual voices even more distinctive than the dialogue (on the grounds that there are things going through your head you'd never say out loud) and I'm wondering how far I can go before the audience just thinks 'this style is awful'.

So, for Michael, when he's in a normal mood his voice is OTT and purple, but when he gets depressed it swings into a more physically subdued but emotionally hyper style; the other characters are to a greater or lesser extent plainer in their narrative.

So my questions are

1) how many swings in narrative style will a reader put up with and

2) what degree of hammy and purple prose is still acceptable before crossing the line into bad?

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

It's hard for me to say without seeing examples of the writing.

Feel free to experiment though. That's what art is all about.

 

[Penpilot]

Narration is always colored buy character, and I think the reader will tolerate anything as long as it's at least entertaining. I'd say push the boundaries a bit. You can always pull back if you've gone too far.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

This sounds like something that would be fairly hard to do well, require a LOT of time and effort on your part, and not necessarily improve the story much. In other words, it might be kind of gimmicky.

But as T.Allen.Smith said, I'd have to see an example to know exactly what it is you mean. It could be interesting. (And for a minute, by "purple" I thought you literally meant the text would be purple-colored...)