I've deliberately pulled the punctuation from this: Monica considered him ideal assuming he’d like the change and the challenge to both mend the lens and add an ornate handle Been staring at it a while. Can it be saved with a semicolon or a comma or two? I don't want to be beaten with a rewrite.
I'd maybe just add in a couple commas, but then again this is an area that I'm not particularly strong in. Something like: Monica considered him ideal, assuming he’d like the change, and the challenge to both mend the lens and add an ornate handle
thanks...breakpoint yes after the word 'ideal' but thinking I want the keep 'the change and the challenge' as one
Hm... It's got two different reads for me. This first reads the middle bit as a parenthetical interjection of a conditional nature: Monica considered him ideal, assuming he’d like the change and the challenge, to both mend the lens and add an ornate handle. My second read is more of a decision on Monica's part that he would like the change and the challenge: Monica considered him ideal, assuming he’d like the change and the challenge to both mend the lens and add an ornate handle.
Yes, your second interpretation's how I wanted it to be read. But as you initially perceived it as syntactically ambiguous, I may be throwing in the towel for a rewrite—does it read okay now with the punctuation? @Elven Candy & @Wreybies This isn't in a long story by the way, it's in a prosey-short. Spoiler: boring detail Wasn't wanting to forfeit the similarity and repetition with the phonemes embedded in the sentence—hence the reluctance. Monica considered him ideal, assuming he’d like the change and the challenge to both mend the lens and add an ornate handle.
Eh, well, I'm no good with prose--in fact I don't even know what it is exactly. To me it reads fine with the one comma, but I don't read poems or anything like them.
Prose is just written language, you're safe. Used 'prosey' to hint at my words being 'purple', tending towards the florid.
I vote for the rewrite. Monica considered him ideal. She assumed that he’d like the change and the challenge of both mending the lens and adding an ornate handle.
thanks @ChickenFreak I'm noting the switch to simple past—I'll paste it in and see how it reads in context.
wip Monica considered him ideal, and assumed he would enjoy the change of scene, and of course, the challenge. She licked her lips, visualised both the mending of the lens, and also the addition of an ornate handle with yes, a ribbon, possibly blue... and yes, she hoped - all the while Damien might juggle those enormous beach balls from his collection, wear the spotty underpants of his own design, he was so creative... ...she wiped drool from her chin, and she reached for the telephone.
Laughing; Damian in the short story is actually (fictionally) Arthur, 73, time-served craftsman, steadies his hands with wrist-weights and shuffles where'er he walks! Last beach balls he juggled, he was killing time at a talent show before his apprenticeship kicked in. Was the summer of '59. He was a teen Redcoat at Butlins, Brighton and Hove.