Blog 44

Hello everybody, today we have an untitled piece from Sammy on Writing.com

Paragraph 1

So he thought he would try again. The vellum was ready. His ink and quill were all prepared. A warm fire crackled contently in the corner of the study. But its owner sat nervously downstairs in the dining room. Lonely at the head of the rather grandiose dinner table. Dinner had long since finished. Guests disappearing one by one like ghosts, with phantom handshakes hugs and kisses. Short anecdotes and funny little secrets had fallen from their lips. Nonsensical to anyone else but to the man at the table, they meant everything. They were the hallmarks of old friendships and rivalries. Brushstrokes on the canvas of his long and at points bloody tiring life. Dash it all, he thought. Then he whispered to the deaf room they may as well be ghosts now. And as he said it a tear rolled down his cheeks something which he had not felt since he was a child. Terrible thoughts started to course through his head. This could be the rest of his existence. Sitting here alone cold and tired. The head of this table. 

 I like this paragraph. The words and imagery are evocative, serving to both entertain in-of themselves and introduce us to the story and a setting rich with imagination. There are missteps with awkward phrasing, inefficiency, and that first sentence, which doesn’t make sense, but these are things easily improved. So let’s begin.

I already mention how the first sentence doesn’t make sense, and you can refer to the sentence immediately preceding this for an example as to why. ‘So’ is a continuation word and sometimes a conclusion; it needs to come from somewhere, to refer to something the reader is aware of. The initial sentence refers to nothing preceding it or after it, rendering the ‘so’ incorrect. But there’s more here. There is a subtle shift in POV from the first few sentences to ‘but its owner’. Previously the style is personal with ‘he’ and ‘his’ then converts to ‘its owner’. This is grammatically fine but jarring and manifests into inconsistency. In the rest of the chapter, which admittedly is quite short, there’s no further mention of him writing/trying anything, meaning this sentence introduces a concept that is promptly abandoned and never explained. The combination of these elements results in the sentence feeling awkward and out of place. I would delete it as unnecessary. It only conveys that he’s going to reattempt something, but the story doesn’t explore or expand upon that element at all, meaning it doesn’t serve much purpose.

I have no changes for the second sentence. Normally I might change this to an active sentence, but it reads well here and the passive tone suits it a little better than an active one in my opinion. Active sentences tend to be louder and this is more of an introduction phrase than a defining one.

The third (His ink and quill were all prepared) sentence is a little more susceptible to change. The ‘all’ reads slightly off as it refers to two objects when it usually refers to three or more. And here, the passive ‘were’ does read weak and so I would like to change it. I spent a while mulling over this sentence, trying to figure out a way to preserve the weighted tone of these sentences. The description/sentences here feel distinct and important, and this makes them more compelling to read. The solution I devised was…

—The vellum was ready. His ink and quill lay beside it, patient, and a fire crackled in the study’s corner.—

I don’t have any particular reasons for why I chose the phrase ‘lay beside it’ other than that it seemed to work. I believe this is because it continues the tone of the first sentence. ‘lay beside’ has two elements, the first is that it’s not a loud action, it maintains the understated importance implied in ‘was ready’, and (for the second) it echoes the sentiment of ‘readiness’. I added the ‘patient’ because the rhythm needed a soft pause there, something to transition to the next sentence so they flowed, but not so much that they lost their distinction. I combined these sentences because in the original structure the ‘a fire crackled’ read slightly tacked on. This caused a slight problem though, because if ‘ink and quill’ flowed too smoothly into ‘a fire’ they read as a single element instead of two and that caused the descriptive block to read liked it was abridged/incomplete. I think you can hear it here-

—The vellum was ready. His ink and quill lay beside it and a fire crackled in the study’s corner. But it’s owner…—

The difference is admittedly minimal, but I still prefer the distinction ‘patient’ adds. Aside from that, I deleted ‘warm’ since that’s understood from ‘fire’ and ‘crackled’ provides the homey and comfortable aesthetic just as well. Then I reduced ‘in the corner of the study’ to ‘the study’s corner’ because it read less clunky.

I’ll be addressing the next two sentences simultaneously because they have a slight inefficiency. (But its owner sat nervously downstairs in the dining room. Lonely at the head of the rather grandiose dinner table.)Specifically that ‘in the dining room’ and ‘dinner table’ somewhat imply one another. That aside, I’ll be changing ‘its owner’ to ‘he’ both because it fits the ‘his ink and quill’ and because the author mentions four distinct objects above, three of which are related to actual writing so ‘its’ feels incorrect. The second sentence of these is also incomplete as it lacks a subject. I see a couple immediate possibilities.

—But he sat nervously downstairs, alone at the head of the rather grandiose dinner table.—

—But he sat nervously downstairs in the dining room, alone at the head of the rather grandiose table.—

—But he sat nervously in the dining room below, alone at the head of the rather grandiose table.—

I hesitate to use ‘lonely’ in these because I want to avoid it echoing with ‘nervously’. I also can’t quite decide if emphasizing the presence of a dining room helps to build the aesthetic or not. I think the first option flows best from the changes we’ve made so far, and the ‘in the dining room’ from the second option reads a little clunky. The ‘alone at the head…’ reads a little poorly in the third option, feeling a little disconnected or run-on. It has something to do with the ‘alone/below’ pair but there’s not many alternatives to those. I think we’ll stick with the first option.

There are very few changes I would make to the next sentence, they’re full of atmosphere and energy. Most of my changes are purely grammatically. The next two sentences needed to be combined as one. They read as one currently but separated by a period, so we’ll just swap that out for a comma. (Dinner had long since finished. Guests disappearing one by one like ghosts with phantom handshakes hugs and kisses.)There also needs to be a comma{s} after handshakes, ‘hugs’ and possibly ‘kisses’ (depending on whether or not you follow Oxford.)

For the next two sentences (Short anecdotes and funny little secrets had fallen from their lips. Nonsensical to anyone else but to the man at the table, they meant everything.) I would just change ‘nonsensical’ to ‘nonsense’ because I think it reads better. It’s a little softer and a little more familiar, and thus more suited to the author’s desired tone. A comma after ‘else’ might also be appropriate.

The next two sentences are being treated together again because they are read/written as one sentence with a period in the middle. The second of these is incomplete, but doesn’t read like it because it is a continuation of the first.

(They were the hallmarks of old friendships and rivalries. Brushstrokes on the canvas of his long and at points bloody tiring life.) So, I would change the period to a comma. Then I would consider changing ‘at points’ to ‘sometimes’. A slightly thornier issue is the ‘bloody’, not because it reads poorly or is incorrect but because it’s slightly confusing, able to be read both on its own and attached to the ‘tiring’. So while on a second read the meaning is evident, I prefer to avoid requiring a second read for comprehension whenever possible. The only easy solution I see is to bracket ‘sometimes’ in commas, separating it from the ‘bloody’ so it can only connect to the ‘tiring’.

Moving on, we have (Dash it all, he thought.) and here I would just use apostrophes or italics to further designate inner thought and distinguish it from the dialogue in the next sentence. (The original format was not italicized, I added them to distinguish it from my writing.)

Next sentence. (Then he whispered to the deaf room they may as well be ghosts now.)

Here I would add the quotation marks to the dialogue, both because they’re grammatically appropriate and to help clarify where the dialogue begins. I would also consider combining this with the previous sentence because you could do so in such a way to remove the double ‘he’ in close proximity, which currently echos unpleasantly.

—‘Dash it all’ he thought and whispered to the deaf room, “They may as well be ghosts now.”—

This next sentence has a little more to putter around with. (And as he said it a tear rolled down his cheeks something which he had not felt since he was a child.) I would like to the delete the ‘he said’ as unnecessary since we know he spoke and it just happened (meaning the indication of simultaneous action is unnecessary.)

—A tear rolled down his cheek, something he had not felt since childhood.—

The rest of the prose changes are pretty simple. I changed ‘cheeks’ to ‘cheek’ because ‘tear’ was singular. I added a comma before ‘something’ because it was grammatically appropriate (The sentence after ‘something’ is a tacked on though, ergo it gets separated from the initial thought) and deleted the ‘which’ as unnecessary. Finally I replaced ‘he was a child’ with ‘childhood’ because it was fewer words.

Just a few changes for the remaining sentences. (Terrible thoughts started to course through his head. This could be the rest of his existence. Sitting here alone cold and tired. The head of this table.)

The last two sentences are incomplete, following a similar pattern to the rest of the paragraph where they’re written as one sentence but punctuated as several. A comma is also required after ‘alone’. (Once a list reaches three distinct elements you have to start separating the elements.)

—Terrible thoughts started to course through his head. This could be the rest of his existence, sitting here alone, cold and tired, at the head of this table.—

The end of this section gets a little comma heavy, inviting confusion but I’m not sure I can swap any of the commas out. Maybe the last one for a colon, but that only works if ‘the head of this table’ was a culmination and not just another element, which doesn’t seem to be the case. So, unless I wish to revert to the original structure an add some content to the last two sentences, this will have to remain as it is.

All my edits.

— The vellum was ready. His ink and quill lay beside it, patient, and a fire crackled in the study’s corner.But he sat nervously downstairs, alone at the head of the rather grandiose dinner table. Dinner had long since finished, guests disappearing one by one like ghosts, with phantom handshakes, hugs and kisses. Short anecdotes and funny little secrets had fallen from their lips. Nonsense to anyone else, but to the man at the table they meant everything. They were the hallmarks of old friendships and rivalries, brushstrokes on the canvas of his long and, sometimes, bloody tiring life.

‘Dash it all’ he thought and whispered to the deaf room, “They may as well be ghosts now.” A tear rolled down his cheek, something he had not felt since childhood. Terrible thoughts started to course through his head. This could be the rest of his existence, sitting here alone, cold and tired, at the head of this table.—

(Added a paragraph at ‘dash’ because it felt appropriate.)

This reads pretty good to me, so I’ll leave it here.

If you like what you’ve read, consider checking out the rest of the story or some of the author’s other stories. https://www.writing.com/main/portfolio/view/inksplodge

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