Sizzling spam fritters
It was an innocent question from one writer to a group of writers on the internet. In a draft of his novel he had written: “and a mess tin of spam fritters were sizzling on the stove.” And she had questioned the word “were”. Surely it should be “was”? The mess tin of spam…
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D.
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Nov 27, 2017 10:45AM
I prefer "and a sizzling mess tin of spam fritters on the stove." But you referred to this questioning writer as male then female. This is the question.
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Yes, that's a good one. It has the "mess tin of spam fritters" that I quite like. You've dodged the question of singular or plural. I like the "sizzling" before the "mess tin".The original questioner was indeed male. He was stuck on "was" or "where" and I was trying to nudge him gently towards a new order of words to get around the plural/ singular problem.
You said "his" novel and then "she" had questioned. Now that I've thought more about it. If I had written the sentence, I might've said: "... while spam fritters sizzled in a mess tin on the stove."
