#leon wing

“Simon turned out the lamp and Eileen unbuttoned her dress, slipping it off over her shoulders, hanging it over the back of his desk chair."

Excerpt from "Beautiful World, Where Are You?" By Sally Rooney

The two participle clauses don’t seem to depict one action interrupted by another nor two actions happening at the same time.

Rather, they seem to depict consecutive actions.

If so, the sentence could have been re-written (or edited) using verbs parallel to the second verb, ‘unbuttoned’, to depict one action following another:

Omit obvious details, like getting into the car. The case in this excerpt:

“She cocked her head, a mirrored pantomime of him thinking. He walked out of the kitchen and out the front door to his car. In the passenger seat was the clean shirt he’d brought to wear the next day. It was only just starting to get dark out.”

After walking out the house, or more specifically the kitchen - note the omission of details of the walk towards the front door and opening it - he spots the shirt in the passenger, without the reader being told he has entered the car, having unlocked it.

‘Entering the restaurant, Jim saw his ex-wife, Sara, sitting closely beside a man who looked to be at least twenty years younger than her. Jim couldn’t believe it. It was shocking to see Sara with someone so much younger than her, younger than Jim too, since he and Sara were the same age, so shocking that Jim dropped his car keys.

“Sir,” the waiter said, “you dropped these,” and handed Jim his car keys.’

...

Now consider this edited version:

‘Entering the restaurant, Jim saw his ex-wife, Sara, sitting beside a man who looked to be at least twenty years younger than her.

“Sir,” the waiter said, “you dropped these,” and handed Jim his car keys.’

So, what just happened? Well, I cut “Jim couldn’t believe it. It was shocking to see Sara with someone so much younger than her, younger than Jim too, since he and Sara were the same age, so shocking that Jim dropped his car keys.”

The difference in the two versions is that the latter version has more “respect for you, the reader, built into it. The ideas “Jim couldn’t believe it” and “It was shocking” are contained in the action of Jim dropping his keys. I made the leap of faith that you’d assume Jim and Sara to be about the same age. In the process, I’ve saved myself (and you) thirty-seven words—about half the total length of the original bit.

How did I go about making that cut? Well, I imagined that I was you and that you read the same way I do, that you would be discontented with the first version at the same places I was, as I read it.”

Excerpt From

"A Swim in a Pond in the Rain"

This short fiction appeared in the inaugural issue of Queer Southeast Asia in 2016 as Mixed Signals. After a few issues, the website and its magazine have been discontinued. I’m making my piece available again, as a free ebook single or e-short, exclusively at Google Play Books store:

More of less is more:

I’ve touched on this topic before: the validity of omitting some details in a narrative.

I have two examples, from The Body Lies by Jo Baker:

The narrator goes to make coffee, and takes a cup to a colleague, Mina. The highlights show the conversation between them. Mina has opened her door. In the dialogue the narrator asks if Mina wants milk, and they go on to talk about some notes. Then they sit.

All through this, no mention about the narrator handing over the coffee, nor Mina taking it. The point is, there is no need to state, explicitly, or play by play, those actions. They can be omitted because they may be inferred.

The same with the next example, also from the same book:

The narrator is with another colleague. He asks if she is hungry. Another dialogue, without the he-said-she-said: toast and tea? He goes to fill the kettle and find bread. No mention that he puts the slices into the toaster. After a couple of paragraphs of interaction, we read a two-line paragraph, that the toaster pops, and he fishes out “it”, the bread.

By Leon Wing

(Drafted on the eve of 2019) By Leon Wing