Hi, I want to describe walls of trees are surrounding my characters. Here is my sentence: "Her tenseness is relieved as they finally are stepping out of the imprisonment of tree walls" It just doesn't sound right to put two nouns next to each other? I guess tree is acting as an adjective here, that's what I want. How do I fix it? Treeful walls? And it is more than one tree... so shouldn't it be "trees walls"? You can tell I'm totally lost. I guess I can just replace that word with forest, but I want it to be more descriptive. Thanks! Terr
You could just say they escape from the imprisonment of the trees, and forget about calling it a wall. Or call it a wall of trees.
If you hit a golf ball in such a place that there's a wall of trees between you and the fairway, it's called ' being in jail'. You might be able to do something with that.
According to the dictionary, tension is a feeling while tenseness is more of a physical state. At the moment, my character is quite tense physically, thus I think tenseness would fit better, that's all. I do understand people use the word tension more often than tenseness though. @minstrel - Tenseness = ▸ noun: (psychology) a state of mental or emotional strain or suspense ▸ noun: the physical condition of being stretched or strained Tension = noun ▸ the feeling of being so nervous or worried that you cannot relax more... ▸ the nervous feeling that you have when you are reading or watching something very exciting or frightening more... ▸ the feeling caused by a lack of trust between people, groups, or countries who do not agree about something and may attack each other more... ▸ a situation in which opposing aims, ideas, or influences cause problems more... ▸ the degree to which something such as a rope or muscle is pulled tight more...
A good point. But your readers might not have a dictionary handily available, or want to use one in order to understand a story.
Physically, tension is when you've got, say, a rubber band stretched as tightly as it will go. I'm not sure how that would manifest itself in a human; perhaps Usain Bolt on the starting blocks? Mentally, it's when you've got something worrying you and you can't do anything about it but worry. I'd say your character is more mentally tense than physically. So, by your own logic, tension should win. Having said that, both words do the job, and which you use is a matter of personal taste; my taste is for tension. Although, I'd actually prefer stress...
Grammatically, there's nothing wrong with this. You've created a compound noun, just like tree house, blue-green or rainforest. [compounds can be two words, hyphenated, or one word (there are no consistent rules governing this), so if you've made up the compound, you could say tree wall, tree-wall or treewall, and they'd all be valid] And... If you can have a brick wall made of bricks, there's no reason you can't have a tree wall made of trees.
As indicated by the rest, you're overthinking it. Noun phrases like this are a perfectly common part of English as a Germanic language. socket wrench car keys door handle glass window the list has now end....
I think you have a case of trying too hard. Sometimes the most obvious word is the best word - in your case, just use "forest". It's like, you wouldn't wanna read: "I looked into the two gelatinous balls located in his head." - The line, "I looked into his eyes" is by far the better sentence. Btw, YAY for Doraemon A childhood favourite of mine!
Ha! Thanks for all that replied. I will gain privilege to post my novel in the forum next week, hoping to get more feedback! @Mckk Grew up in Vietnam and we call him Doremon Childhood favorite cartoon book of mine!
Speaking of overthinking it, so was I in my post above. Wrey's post quoted here is much the simpler answer.
But you're not Vietnamese? We called him Ding Dong in Cantonese actually then the author died and the rights changed and the name got changed to a more literal translation of the Japanese original Doraemon, which sounds awful.
I prefer 'wall of trees', but to avoid repetition of 'of' you should probably change 'imprisonment' to an adjective. Finally, I think 'are finally stepping' sounds odd in this context. You've used a past tense ('relieved') along with ('are stepping'). This combination sounds a bit strange to me. I would reword the sentence as follows: "Her tenseness is relieved as they finally step out of the imprisoning wall of trees"
Too late to help, but I think the word stockade gives me a feeling of a wall of trees, you would have to word your sentence differently to use it. BTW down in South Florida an Australian pest tree, Melaleuca, grows so thickly when left unchecked it does form an impenetrable barrier for any large animal such as a human, deer, etc., you have to find a path to get out of them. Oscar Leigh no harm/slander intended with the Australian pest tree reference.
@Mckk you're Cantonese? I also am. I was born and raise in Vietnam, but family are Chinese. My exposure to Doremon is in Vietnamese, thus I never called him Ding Dong. Again, thank for more answers. I am ready to move on from this topic and continue on my story.
Ah really? Lei ho maaaa do you speak any Cantonese? I was born in Hong Kong but raised in England, so kinda bicultural like yourself.
I agree with the others your sentence doesn't read well. Try something like "As she stepped out of the forest she was relieved to be free of the wall of trees that had imprisoned them."
Walls of trees. Ranks of trees. Looming ranks of trees. Surrounding ranks of trees. Maze of trees. Tree prison. Tree enclosure. Stockade of trees. Tree stockade