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Sun 13 Nov, 2016 05:52 am
Good morning everyone!
This sentence is from a book review.
I'm struggling with strange room here. I need to know if it´s better to say ¨strange room¨ or ¨unfamiliar room.¨ Also, does it sound natural to say ¨absolutely anything¨?
The context:
My attempt: Susie wakes up in a strange room without remembering absolutely anything.
Thank you in advance.
Well, I would use 'unfamilar' instead of 'strange', because the latter word introduces ambiguity - was the room strange to her because she had never seen it before, or because it only had three walls, or a sloping ceiling, or was garishly decorated, or what?
Secondly, I would prefer to write "remembering nothing" rather than "without remembering absolutely anything", which is awkward, wordy, and overdone. Avoid sprinkling your writing with intensifiers and superlatives to pep it up. This can be tiring for the reader. Maybe 'absolutely nothing' if your intention is to convey that she was suffering from amnesia? Do you mean she remembers nothing about anything at all, or nothing about something in particular, e.g. how she got in (the bed?) in the strange/unfamiliar room?
Also, a personal pet hate of mine is people who end their pleas for help with 'thanks in advance' (or worse, 'TIA'). It kind of implies you are just going to come back and harvest any replies without thanking anyone. Just a pet peeve.