He did something. She looked up from pulling her knitting apart.

or does it need to be

He did something. She looked up from where she was pulling her knitting apart.

I think the former is better. Just as correct IMHO and punchier, less verbose.

Oh, good, Deb, thank you. I wrote the first version, and then I was having one of those moments in revision when something which came perfectly naturally in drafting suddenly looks odd and as if it's missing bits...

What did he do?

It's funny how looking at something for too long can make it look really weird, isn't it?

What did he do?

<img src=../images/wink.gif> You might think something rude - I couldn't possibly comment...

Actually, he didn't do anything - what comes before her is dialogue and so on, which doesn't give any useful context. I just put him in so that it was clear what this sentence was doing in there, IYSWIM

looking at something for too long can make it look really weird, isn't it?

So true. I'm at that stage now - revising everything, and trying to work out what of the stuff that came naturally really does work, and what actually needs a tweak and a tighten and a poke and some commas moved around. It's that business of trying to read it as a reader, but also stay in touch with my sense of it as a writer.

At least in Scrivener, what with the split screen and the outliner and all, it's infinitely, infinitely easier to hop around and search for things and find things... I thought of Scrivener as useful for planning and first draft (or crazy first draft and retro-planning, if you do it that way round), but can't believe the difference it's making to this stage when in Word I'd be thrashing around trying not to drown.

Edited by EmmaD at 15:01:00 on 28 June 2013