Writer’s Toolbox

Ask The Writer

Your most pressing and perplexing questions about writing answered here by Gotham teacher Brandi Reissenweber.

Here's the sentence of concern: "She was tired of living out of a suitcase, in dimly lit motel rooms, and driving for entire days." I write a lot of sentences like this where I think there's something wrong, but I can;t tell what.

You’ve written a sentence with a series. She’s tired of several things and you’ve put them all in one sentence. This is working toward a nice balance in the sentence. What you’re missing, though, is a parallel structure. One way to test this is to see how each of the three units—the three things she’s tired of—works with the sentence structure you’ve established. The sentence lists what “She’s tired of,” so break it down like this:

She was tired of living out of a suitcase.
She was tired of in dimly lit motel rooms.
She was tired of driving for entire days.

When you simplify the sentence, it’s clear which unit isn’t parallel. The first and the last unit have a verb, while the second one doesn’t. So, you might revise like this:

She was tired of living out of a suitcase, eating take-out in dimly lit motel rooms, and driving for entire days.

I’m glad you’ve developed a trust for your writerly ear. If it sounds wrong to you, it will likely sound wrong to your reader, too.