Grammar help

[Edoc'sil]

So I posted this somewhere else to get some feedback on whether it was a good hook or not. I got quite a few replies saying the grammar was dodgy. To me it reads ok, I also put it through a grammar program (pro writing aid, if there are better ones I'd love to know) and I cannot figure out what is wrong with it.

Could someone more knowledgable than me help and tell me exactly what the errors are because the replies just said it was wrong and not how it was wrong, I need to know so I don't repeat my mistakes. (it's anonymous so I can't ask the people who said it)


Fria pounded the table so hard the candle holder bounced up from the pitted table. Causing the room’s light to flicker and dance. She looked at each of us in turn. Her deep green eyes lingering on mine last, she softened.

“I will not have us be the same as them, if we have enough supporters then there will be no need for violence.” Sighing and rubbing her eyes, she continued.

“We’ll just have to keep quiet for now. This is why I told you not to tell anyone. Now Jamie is gone.”

All four of us were silent, I stood up from my chair to go refill my cup of water. I gripped the side of the barrel and watched ripples slowly bounce around the dark pool. They distorted my features and a grotesque monster looked up at me. My scruffy blonde hair, tied at the back, created a dark spiky countenance.

 

[Toby Frost]

Fria pounded the table so hard (technically, "that" should go here) the candle holder bounced up from the pitted table. Causing the room’s light to flicker and dance.

This isn't a whole sentence (it doesn't have a subject/noun) so it either needs a new noun ("It caused" instead of "Causing") or a comma after "table", so it reads "... the table, causing...".

She looked at each of us in turn. Her deep green eyes lingering on mine last, she softened.

This is technically correct, but reads awkwardly, especially after "Causing", and it's hard to get the meaning immediately.

“I will not have us be the same as them, if we have enough supporters then there will be no need for violence.”

This is a run-on sentence and should be two sentences. You need a full stop after "them" and a capital letter for "If".

Sighing and rubbing her eyes, she continued.

“We’ll just have to keep quiet for now. This is why I told you not to tell anyone. Now Jamie is gone.”

I'm not sure if this should be one sentence or two, but if Jamie being gone is the reason why they shouldn't tell anyone, it should be one, separated with a comma as before.

All four of us were silent,

Full stop here, new sentence. "All four of us" is a different subject to "I".

I stood up from my chair to go refill my cup of water. I gripped the side of the barrel and watched ripples slowly bounce around the dark pool. They distorted my features and a grotesque monster looked up at me. My scruffy blonde hair, tied at the back, created a dark spiky countenance.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I am not the strongest grammatician around here, but there are a few things I can see (also I am good at dialogue punctuation, for some obscure reason) - comments in bold.

[QUOTE="Edoc'sil, post: 2463476, member: 46332"


Fria pounded the table so hard the candle holder bounced up from the pitted table. Causing the room’s light to flicker and dance. Here, you have divided two clauses that should be linked - the action in sentence one causes the effect in sentence two. Then, causing is a joining word here, so you have indicated they are linked but the full stop means they are not. You can either drop 'causing the' and move it to The room's light flickered and danced - but that means the two aren't as clearly linked - or just put a comma where you have the full stop. That's what I'd do.

She looked at each of us in turn. Her deep green eyes lingering on mine last, she softened. this is fine.

“I will not have us be the same as them, here, I think you either need a new sentence, or something like a hyphen to denote a pause. Say this sentence out loud and you will see that the two clauses are seperate. You could use a semi colon, too, as they are linked and, technically it is the right choice, but lots of people hate them (because they don't understand them, imho, semi colons rock, but a hyphen or period would do. if we have enough supporters then there will be no need for violence.” Sighing and rubbing her eyes, she continued. you can keep the full stop (although a comma would also work as it is a dialogue tag, at a stretch, but bring the spoken sentence onto the same line so that we know it's linked to this and it is her speaking.

“We’ll just have to keep quiet for now. This is why I told you not to tell anyone. Now Jamie is gone.”

All four of us were silent, I stood up from my chair to go refill my cup of water. Again, these are seperate clauses. They are silent. Then he gets up. He doesn't get up because they're silent. A full stop would work fine. I gripped the side of the barrel and watched ripples slowly bounce around the dark pool. They distorted my features and a grotesque monster looked up at me. My scruffy blonde hair, tied at the back, created a dark spiky countenance. The last bit is all fine.
[/QUOTE]

hope that helps! Jo

 

[Pyan]

Mmm, there's one or two things that jar.

Fria pounded the table so hard the candle holder bounced up from the pitted table. Causing the room’s light to flicker and dance. She looked at each of us in turn. Her deep green eyes lingering on mine last, she softened.
Fria pounded the table so hard the candle holder bounced up from the pitted surface, causing the light to flicker and dance. She looked at each of us in turn. As her deep green eyes lingered on mine, they softened.

“I will not have us be the same as them, if we have enough supporters then there will be no need for violence.” Sighing and rubbing her eyes, she continued.
“I will not have us be the same as them. If we have enough supporters then there will be no need for violence.” she continued. She sighed, and rubbed her eyes.

“We’ll just have to keep quiet for now. This is why I told you not to tell anyone. Now Jamie is gone.”
“We’ll just have to keep quiet for now. This is why I told you not to tell anyone, now Jamie is gone.”

All four of us were silent, I stood up from my chair to go refill my cup of water. I gripped the side of the barrel and watched ripples slowly bounce around the dark pool. They distorted my features and a grotesque monster looked up at me. My scruffy blonde hair, tied at the back, created a dark spiky countenance.
All four of us fell silent. I stood up from my chair to refill my cup of water. Gripping the side of the barrel, I watched ripples slowly bounce around the dark liquid, distorting my features. Suddenly a grotesque monster was looking back at me, with my scruffy blonde hair, tied at the back, creating a dark spiky halo.

All really minor changes, but I hope that they show that the flow of the narrative can be improved just by playing with the way the words fit together, and seeing if two sentences should be run together or, contrariwise, a longer one with two ideas in it should be split.

Hope this helps.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

I'm definitely not the strongest person here for grammar, but the things that leapt out at me were as follows:

Fria pounded the table so hard the candle holder bounced up from the pitted table surface (repetition of table),. comma instead of full stop Ccausing the room’s light to flicker and dance. She looked at each of us in turn., Hher deep green eyes lingering on mine last,. Sshe softened.

“I will not have us be the same as them,. Iif we have enough supporters, then there will be no need for violence.” She sighedighing and rubbeding her eyes, she continued. delete paragraph space “We’ll just have to keep quiet for now. This is why I told you not to tell anyone., nNow Jamie is gone.”

All four of us were silent,. I stood up from my chair to go refill my cup of water. I gripped the side of the barrel and watched ripples slowly bounce around the dark water pool. They distorted my features and until a grotesque monster looked up at me. My scruffy blonde hair, tied at the back, created a dark comma spiky halo countenance.

Other, more competent folks will probably give better advice.

 

[Edoc'sil]

Thanks so much for your help everyone!

Now that you've pointed them out, I can see it happens a lot in my writing. I think it's a flaw of me trying to write like I'm speaking. I'm going to go back through everything and have a go at sorting it out.

@Toby Frost @Jo Zebedee @pyan @Kerrybuchanan

 

[Wayne Mack]

Fria pounded the table so hard the candle holder bounced up from the pitted table. Causing the room’s light to flicker and dance.

The second phrase is problematic. There is no subject to the action. Also, I suspect the action is not affecting some light hanging from the ceiling to flicker, but the candle in the holder. Maybe rephrase it to something like, "The candle flickered, nearly going out causing the shadows in the room to dance." The other option would be to drop the phrase entirely. The first part tells us Fria as angry, the second phrase adds nothing to describe her emotional state.

Her deep green eyes lingering on mine last, she softened.

The 'mine' indicates a shift to first person. The other text reads as third person. It also doesn't really explain Fria's transition from anger. It doesn't feel that looking at someone's face would have that much affect on Fria's emotional state.

All four of us were silent, I stood up from my chair to go refill my cup of water. I gripped the side of the barrel and watched ripples slowly bounce around the dark pool. They distorted my features and a grotesque monster looked up at me. My scruffy blonde hair, tied at the back, created a dark spiky countenance.

Again, the telling is shifting back to first person. The first sentence should be split into two; it has two independent actions.

I feel you are struggling to maintain a consistent point of view. Most of this seems to be written in third person, so that seems to be the easiest transition. If first person is desired, I would expect a lot more reaction from the first person perspective, not a simple reporting of events.

 

[Edoc'sil]

Yet more good points @Wayne Mack, thank you.

 

[thisreidwrites]

Happy to!

Fria pounded the table so hard the candle holder bounced up from the pitted table. Causing the room’s light to flicker and dance.

Style: you repeat table twice in the same sentence. "pitted surface" would work just as well.

Also, "Causing the room's light to flicker and dance" is a sentence fragment. Here you go: What Is a Sentence Fragment?

“I will not have us be the same as them, if we have enough supporters then there will be no need for violence.”

An excellent statement! However, it's something called a "comma splice." It means you've used a comma when you needed either a full stop or a conjunction. What Is a Comma Splice? And Why Do Editors Hate Them?

All four of us were silent, I stood up from my chair to go refill my cup of water.

Comma splice!

This is actually a really interesting opening. I'm very curious about what's happening, who these folks are, and what they're trying to fight. You can do this! I know it can be a pain to learn these grammatical rules, but once you do, they become second nature. Keep writing! Don't be discouraged!

 

[Don]

It works as you originally wrote it. Most pros would probably use it "as is" and move along. Regardless, it's difficult for me to resist overthinking word play.

Fina pounded the table so hard the candle holder bounced up from the pitted tabletop. And sent shock waves to make the room's light flicker and dance.​

 

[autoretscriptor]

@Edoc'sil,

The comments here tell you what you need to know about grammar (eg, the incomplete sentence, comma splice, etc).
But I'm not so sure you should just immediately change everything in your writing to conform to "good grammar."

You write like you speak, and that gives your writing a certain power.

I would carefully consider (and learn from) the helpful comments here.
But ultimately, you might decide you don't want to conform to "good grammar" in every respect in every instance.

 

[.matthew.]

The comments here tell you what you need to know about grammar (eg, the incomplete sentence, comma splice, etc).
But I'm not so sure you should just immediately change everything in your writing to conform to "good grammar."

True enough, but it's important to know which rules you're breaking and why.

Without knowing those things, errors simply compound on each other and often appear inconsistent throughout the book. That leads things to look messy and will put off a lot more readers than a stylistic choice to break the mould - which would also alienate some people.

 

[tinkerdan]

Obviously I missed this one way back in February.

This piece has potential, and there are the grammar problems that everyone is addressing.

However, there are other problems that need to be addressed after you get a grasp of the grammar problems. There are a lot of things that beg tightening and clarification.

I’ll try to explain and to demonstrate.

The first paragraph has a potential image that gets fracture by your sentence structure and there is missing world or setting building that shows up later when you force your character to over explain his actions ie; I stood from my chair…

In light of that I moved elements of your description to something that would help keep the image all together. The pounding of the table moves the candle holder and the holders bouncing causes the lighting of the room to seem to flicker. Next establish that they are all sitting and also that she is not just looking but her countenance is such that she deems to softens it for the narrator. Right now that is not clear. Her looking is not strong enough and adding some reaction to the look helps support the need for a softening also the softening is connected more to the eyes because I’m unclear of what it looks like for all or part of her to soften. The below is how I would fix this and you might use different wording.


Fria pounded the table hard; the candle holder bounced upon its pitted surface, causing the light of the room to flicker and dance. Her glare made each of us squirm in our seats in turn until she reached me, where her hard deep green eyes met mine and they softened.

The next I wouldn’t alter as much however because you use the word continue I would include all the dialogue after into the one paragraph except that I would pull the last sentence out to be it’s own paragraph because I think her whole rant is leading to that statement as the most important thing. Pulling it out puts focus on it. Also, in the first sentence I removed the comma and put a full stop because even though the one thought follows the other, they work best as too sentences.

“I will not have us be the same as them. If we have enough supporters then there will be no need for violence.” Sighing and rubbing her eyes, she continued. “We’ll just have to keep quiet for now. That is why I told you not to tell anyone.

“Now Jamie is gone.”

In a similar way the next paragraph I separated into separate paragraphs to help the reader and to differentiate specific problems and possible solutions.
The first sentence says all four were silent; they do seem silent and think it is more accurate to say they remained silent.

Next is that over-worded portion mentioned earlier. There a several problems. He stands from a chair possibly because you haven’t established sitting-which I did above. Next he is going for a refill of water and then as though the barrel is at his elbow he grasps the barrel. There seems to be a step missing. So having him stand, grasping an empty cup and turning toward the water barrel cover a number of the over worded parts. It still needs a step-which in this case I covered by separating that from the rest to let the reader add the missing steps to get to the barrel.
Lastly you are guilty of trying to put character description(I’m blond haired)into your dialogue and distracting from what might be more important. So I’ve swapped things around to demonstrate trying to slip the description in and preserving what seems to be the point of the paragraph.

All four of us remained silent.

I stood, grasping my empty cup, and turned toward the water barrel.

Gripping the sides of the barrel I gazed down at the rippling dark pool distorting my reflection: creating a dark spiky countenance of a scruffy blond-haired monster that stared back at me.

Now to the point of the paragraph—and I might be wrong here, but only you know.
My guess is that the narrator might have done something for which he feels enough guilt that he sees a monster in the rippling water. If this is not the case, then I would suggest getting rid of the whole description—because that description should mean something more than just a clever way to describe the character’s hair. The reader is going to wonder what he has done to make himself such a monster.

 

[Edoc'sil]

@thisreidwrites @Don @autoretscriptor @.matthew. @tinkerdan

Thanks for the words of encouragement and for the great points. Some of them have made me think I need to take another close look, even after the grammar has been taken care of. Good points to include in the next draft!