Here's the context. Our young heroine is eating at Sizzler (of course) with her parents who tell her that the family is moving. The character panics. Which sentence better describes her reaction?
This? "I thought I might spin away if I didn't grip the table's edge."
Or this? "I grabbed the table's edge so I wouldn't spin away."
That was my bit of revision today. I changed the first sentence into the second because it occurred to me I should have my character DOING instead of THINKING about doing. I'm surprised by how much I do that, actually--make things too interior, which just. slows. everything. down.
On the food front, I think I might be over cupcakes.
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I grabbed the tables edge to keep myself from spinning.
I held tight to the tables edge as the room went all acid trippy on me.
I held tight to the table as the words fell like bricks from their mouths, sending me floating through Jimi Hendrix's rainbow la la land.
I grabbed the tables edge to keep myself from floating into the fan of eternal destruction and mayhem. We're these really my parents? Or were they Oompa Loompa zombies who spiked my coke with fizzy lifting drink? I looked over at my mother, all of a sudden I wondered if her orange skin was really from overuse of cheap tanning lotion, or... no... it couldn't be.
I don't know what THIS shows or tells about me, but I like the first sentence better. It seems more "teenage" to me.
You've given me something very important to think about in my own writing. I think I write a lot of thinking about doing.
I like the second one better.
I like the second one better, too. But there's no reason - ever - to be over cupcakes. xoxoxo J.
I like the second sentence better, too. A nice insight.
On the other point: I would like to be involved in your quest for a new food obsession.
Google Jaarsma Bakery in Pella Iowa and order the almond "S"s. You'll thank me.
Excellent revision. Excellent Thinking.
If you need help with the reaction part (not the writing part), you could ask my 17-year-old daughter, who has been spinning since we moved here nearly three years ago, knowing that we would be moving again sometime soon. High school is a bad time for unnecessary uncertainty.
I might have to drive to Pella today. If only it weren't snowing!
I like your second sentence, but maybe, in her "grabbing the edge of the table" she should also knock over the cheese bread. Or not. Since, you know, it isn't my writing.
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