Overthinking

Words matter, but not every word (I hope). I just spent a minute rewriting this sentence several times:

He turned to Frank, who was watching the banter, stunned.

Frank is not only “watching” the banter; he’s also hearing it. “observing” would be better. Wait, that means “looking”, too. It doesn’t flow well, either. “watching” it is.

Should it be “the” banter or “their” banter? Whose else would it be? Arg! I can’t tell the difference reading it. Leave my first choice: “the”

I think I may be traumatized from proofing the printed version. If I spend minutes picking words for each sentence, I’ll never finish.

Write, first. Agonize over vocabulary later, if at all.

On the flip side, I deleted two pages from chapter 16 (the end of which is where that sentence is from) when I realized they were info-dumps via dialog. That’s a lot of text to delete, but info-dumps are evil. If only I had version control so it could be retrieved, should I want it later.

Update: Of course, I haven’t let this go. While eating lunch, it occurred to me that I should justify throwing “, stunned” on the end; especially because one of my alpha readers is an English major new to the genre.

• He turned to the watching Frank, who had been stunned by their banter. I’m trying desperately to avoid participles. They pollute the genre. This one is fine, but the avoidance is becoming subconscious, finally. I don’t like the shift to pluperfect. It feels as if it reaches too far back in time for something that is still happening.
• He turned to Frank, stunned from having watched their banter. It’s unclear who is stunned. Is it him or Frank? I don’t like this one.
• He turned to Frank, who had been stunned by their banter. Positive: It gets rid of the visual verb involving the banter. Negative: Pluperfect, again.

Of course, getting rid of the entire “, who” clause is also possible and genre appropriate: Frank was stunned by their banter. Pete turned to him and asked…

I like that one, but it creates paragraph issues. Pete is about to talk, so paragraph break. One sentence paragraphs are common, but I’m trying to minimize them. The ‘jerkiness’ seems out of place here.

Sigh. Frank is now stunned in his own, dedicated paragraph.

As long as I’ve blathered on about this, here’s the context:

“Aw,” Tom pouted. It wasn’t a look that worked with his massive body.

Pete laughed. “Put on your shirt and sit down.”

Frank was stunned by their banter.

Pete turned and addressed him. “Better check on the kitchen. I’d wager Eileen’s taking it over.”

MOVING ON…