#29 Shirley Suspicious

Today we have a piece titled ‘Shirley Suspicious’ by Abaru on Writing.com. 

Paragraph 1

I woke up on a hospital bed with a doctor to my left and a couple of people with familiar faces to my right. My vision was hazy. My eyes were wet, and my lips were dry. One of the familiar faces belonged to my thirteen-year-old daughter, Kenna, who had my hand in hers – She was evidently back from boarding school to visit me. Kenna was tearing up, which explained the wetness of my own eyes. 

Mostly this paragraph just requires cuts for efficiency, so we’ll begin with those before embarking on more fraught and uncertain tides. ‘Up’ can be deleted, along with  ‘people with’ from the first sentence. I would consider deleting the orienting ‘left’ and ‘right comments as they’re mostly unnecessary, replacing it with something like —I woke on a hospital bed to a pair of familiar faces and a doctor.— I switched to ‘pair’ because that indicates two, which is how many people there are. ‘Couple’ is more ambiguous, and invited misinterpretation the first time I read it.

For the fourth sentence, we can delete the second ‘were’ since the first one can serve as the verb for both. In the fifth sentence, the phrase ‘who had my hand in hers’ can be reduced to —held my hand— which is more active and specific, and that’s the extent of the simple cuts, leaving us with…

—I woke on a hospital bed to a pair of familiar faces and a doctor. My vision was hazy. My eyes were wet, and my lips dry. One of the familiar faces belonged to my thirteen-year-old daughter, Kenna, who held my hand – She was evidently back from boarding school to visit me. Kenna was tearing up, which explained the wetness of my own eyes.—

Now we embark on the turbulent tsunami of intent. I take mild umbrage with the second and third sentences in this paragraph for a couple of different reasons. They’re descriptive, but that description doesn’t pertain to what the paragraph is actually about, or even what immediately precedes or ensues them. This makes them intrusive. They also mess with the rhythm of the paragraph because of the alliteration, which has the effects of emphasizing them and conveys the impression of building moment, but nothing comes of the description/momentum building so the emphasis and momentum end up reading off. Finally, there’s just the reiteration of his wet eyes, which get described here and the mentioned again at the end when you only really need the final mention. 

As a solution to these various gripes, I would delete the first mention of ‘wet eyes’ (as unnecessary) and of ‘dry lips’ (as unfortunately orphaned by the previous execution of justice.) I think we can implement the ‘hazy vision’ elegantly via something like …—My hazy vision gradually cleared enough to recognize my …— The problem with this is that is slightly over emphasizes the ‘hazy vision’ so it affects the story more than the author originally intended, it might also be a little too fast of a transition (rhythmically.)

—I woke on a hospital bed to a pair of familiar faces and a doctor. My hazy vision gradually cleared enough to recognize my thirteen-year-old daughter, Kenna, holding my hand.—

Nope, it reads fine to me, and I’m willing to live with the minor corruption of the author’s original intent, safe in the knowledge that should the situation demand it I can sell you all out instead. Moving on…

I can’t quite tell if ‘she was obviously back…’ is a new sentence, or a continuation. If the second, you can delete ‘she was’ and replace the hyphen with a comma. If it is a new sentence, then the rhythm is off, with ‘she was’ reading abruptly as opposed to a smooth continuation. Unfortunately, I don’t have a fix a like for it. I’m considering —She must have returned…— which reads fine rhythmically, but is a little boring/generic. That said, due to the lack of period, I believe it’s a continuation (it’s the capitalized ‘She’ that engenders my confusion) meaning we have something like…

—I woke on a hospital bed to a pair of familiar faces and a doctor. My hazy vision gradually cleared enough to recognize my thirteen-year-old daughter, Kenna, holding my hand, evidently returned from boarding school to visit me.—

The ‘visit me’ is a slightly ambiguous as to whether this is a regular visit or prompted by his accident, but I assume the author means the latter. With that in mind, I might switch ‘returned’ for ‘retrieved’ and ‘to visit me’ for ‘after my accident,’ just to avoid any possible misunderstandings.

Now, for the final sentence. (Kenna was tearing up, which explained the wetness of my own eyes.) Here, there’s a little logical conflict in ‘which explained.’ Why would her crying explain his tears? He just woke up. Unless she was crying into his eyes, which is unlikely. The rhythm is also off between this and the previous sentence. We can alleviate that by switching to a ‘she’ instead of ‘Kenna.’ I would also switch ‘was’ to ‘began’ for the since. (since the verb is ‘tearing up,’ which means she’s starting to cry, there is no different in ‘began’ and ‘was.’ You could make an argument for deleting began/was entirely, since they are technically unnecessary, but ‘began’ smoothes out the rhythm so I’m preserving it.)

—She began tearing up, causing wetness in my own eyes.—

 Used ‘causing’ because it reads fairly well from a rhythm standpoint and matches the author’s word choice (Implementing something like ‘engender’ would read loud and off since it’s so dissonant with the author’s parlance. This is something to beware in your own writing, adding words that don’t fit the ‘sound’ of the paragraph, sentence or book.) Admittedly, ‘causing’ isn’t the most interesting word, and the sentence might end up feeling just a wee bit perfunctory, but lets combine them first.

—I woke on a hospital bed to a pair of familiar faces and a doctor. My hazy vision gradually cleared enough to recognize my thirteen-year-old daughter, Kenna, holding my hand, evidently retrieved from boarding school after my accident. She began tearing up, causing wetness in my own eyes.—

I think this reads pretty good for the most part. On to the next paragraph!

Paragraph 2

In a few seconds, I was also able to identify the other familiar face which was looking at me with a sorrowful smile, if that was even possible. Her expression made her look disgustingly empathetic. It was Shirley. “How are you feeling, Olly?”, she asked. Her voice was shaky. I opened my mouth to speak but I did not manage to say anything coherent. My throat was still too dry, and my mind was still too confused. I was getting the feeling that Shirley and Kenna were expecting an outburst of emotions and not an actual response from me.

A few things for the first sentence: ‘was able to’ is unnecessary, ‘was looking at’ can be reduced to ‘regarded’, and I’m not entirely sure about the phrase ‘if that was even possible,’ which doesn’t really make sense. I guess it could be referring to the contradiction of a ‘sad smile,’ but those are widely accepted. A comma is also required before ‘which.’ I would also like to change the ‘in a few’ to ‘after a few’ but am concerned about the ‘after’ echo. This change is mostly because I don’t like how ‘in’ reads; ‘in’ usually precedes a space of time, this one follows it. I do have another alternative, however…

—It took a few seconds, but I identified the other familiar face, which regarded me with a sorrowful smile, looking disgustingly empathetic.—

I combined these two sentence because it allowed me to delete ‘her expression made her,’ which was slightly repetitive since the new sentence required us to reintroduce the smile. We may also be able to delete the ‘looking,’ and I’m not entirely sure I like the ‘which’ transition. We may be able to deleting it and convert to ‘regarding,’ I don’t think it echoes or that the INGs get lost in one another.

—It took a few seconds, but I identified the other familiar face, regarding me with a sorrowful smile, disgustingly empathetic: Shirley.— (The new sentence structure allowed us to convert this to a colon, which removed the need for ‘it was’, which is passive and not particularly pleasant to read.

We can delete ‘she asked’ since the dialogue and paragraph suffice to indicate the speaker. But including it might improve the rhythm. Also, no comma there, the question mark just replaces the comma in that situation, and you won’t cap because of it either. I think I also want to introduce a new paragraph. While we don’t technically have to since there was no previous speaker, the paragraph thus far has centered around Olly as the subject, Shirley’s dialogue centers on her. It may also read better since the story is transitioning form pure exposition to active events.

—“How are you feeling, Olly?” she asked, her voice shaky—

I combined these sentence because there was no reason for them to be separate and because it removed a passive. I think it reads fine, but it’s also a stylistic choice more in line with I would make personally. The author might disagree.

The next sentence (I opened my mouth to speak but I did not manage to say anything coherent) is mostly unnecessary fluff. The phrase ‘opened my mouth’ is entirely pointless since that action is required for speech (excluding ventriloquists,) and the phrase ‘did not manage to’ is just a wordier version of ‘couldn’t.’ —I tried to respond, but couldn’t muster anything coherent.— I took some liberties with ‘muster,’ but they work ‘respond’ clearly outlines this a speech. I chose ‘respond’ over ‘to speak’ because I think it reads better, fits better with ‘muster,’ and is more accurate. Also, I would start another paragraph since we’re switching away from Shirley as the main subject.

Remainder of paragraph 2: My throat was still too dry, and my mind was still too confused. I was getting the feeling that Shirley and Kenna were expecting an outburst of emotions and not an actual response from me

I would combine the next sentence with the previous via a semi-colon, since they’re directly connect. The second is an explanation/continuation of the first, and I believe they’ll read better combined.

—I tried to respond, but couldn’t muster anything coherent; my throat was still too dry, and my mind too confused.—

Nothing fancy here, deleted the second ‘was still’ as unnecessary, the first suffices for both. I don’t really like the ‘still’ since it feels a bit pointless being that he just woke up and a notable amount of time has yet to elapse, but preserved it for rhythm.

For the final sentence, we can delete the second ‘were’ as unnecessary, and ‘from me’ as that’s obvious from the context and sentence. I also dislike the phrasing ‘was getting,’ which implies a gradual impression while he’s only interacted for one line of dialogue, wherein someone asked him a question. 

—I got the feeling Shirley and Kenna expected an outburst of emotion more than an actual response.—

I deleted the ‘that’ as unnecessary, and converted to ‘more than an’ simply because I think it reads smoother.

All my edits:

—I woke on a hospital bed to a pair of familiar faces and a doctor. My hazy vision gradually cleared enough to recognize my thirteen-year-old daughter, Kenna, holding my hand, evidently retrieved from boarding school after my accident. She began tearing up, causing wetness in my own eyes.

It took a few seconds, but I identified the other familiar face, regarding me with a sorrowful smile, disgustingly empathetic: Shirley.

“How are you feeling, Olly?” she asked, her voice shaky.

I tried to respond, but couldn’t muster anything coherent; my throat was still too dry, and my mind too confused. I got the feeling Shirley and Kenna expected an outburst of emotion more than an actual response.

That’ll be all for today.

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If you have something you would like edited, send it to Keeganandtristenbooks@gmail.com. I will edit a chapter up to a soft cap of 3k words, post a small section as a blog post and provide the rest to you privately.