Paula Hawkins writes a wonderful paragraph in The Girl on the Train.
My days feel empty now I don’t have the gallery to go to any longer. I really miss it. I miss talking to the artists. I even miss dealing with all those tedious yummy mummies who used to drop by, Starbucks in hand, to gawk at the pictures, telling their friends that little Jessie did better pictures than that at nursery school.
Can we do better?
We have a great description of the void in the point-of-view character’s heart. Can we write something even better? Probably so, given the fact that we have to wonder what “tedious yummy mummies” look like.
What we might see for an improved version:
Without the gallery to go to, my days feel empty. I miss talking to the artists. I even miss those smug-faced mummies who dropped by, Starbucks in hand, to gawk at the pictures, telling their friends that little Jessie at nursery school did better pictures than that.
Logic for making improvements:
- The first sentence is two independent clauses awkwardly spliced together.
- Beginning with “my days feel empty” puts the result before the cause. Introducing the cause first might be better: “Without the gallery to go to . . .”
- In present-tense writing, “now” is almost always obvious and should be left out.
- “Any longer” is obvious if the gallery is closed.
- “I really miss it” leaves us wondering what “it” is. Readers must decide whether it’s the showroom, the artwork, the people, or just the chance to get out of the house. Since the sentence that follow show what “it” is, we don’t need this sentence.
- What are “tedious yummy mummies”? Sounds like something to eat, like gummy bears. Perhaps a better characterization might be “smug-faced mummies.”
- “At nursery school” is stronger when we can move it closer to the noun that the phrase modifies, immediately after “Jessie.”
