Is the following sentence clear? He imagined Old Blue Eyes strutting across a proscenium stage, serenading a large audience of blue-haired elderly women cheering maniacally, waving big baggy panties over their heads.
It's fairly clear, but personally I would make sure only to apply the "ing" verbs to 'Old blue-eyes' who is your subject, to avoid any confusion. Something like: "He imagined Old Blue Eyes strutting across a proscenium stage, serenading a large audience of blue-haired elderly women who cheered maniacally and waved big baggy panties over their heads."
There's nothing like some big panties flying around. LOL. The sentence is kind of long. I would think about breaking it up. I also wouldn't use the word blue twice if you can avoid it. Maybe change the women's hair to white or leave out their hair color altogether. We (the readers) already know these fans are old and have big panties. Plus, their hair probably isn't actually blue. Just some stuff to think over that might help you streamline what you're trying to get across.
It is, but I didn't like the participles' subject changing partway through the list. Readers are lazy, and could end up with an image of Old Blue Eyes cheering maniacally as he waves big baggy panties over his audience's heads. Punctuation might help, but another peculiarity is that there are 3 or 4 possible places the OP could insert additional marks, and they're grey-area. He imagined Old Blue Eyes: strutting across a proscenium stage, serenading a large audience of blue-haired elderly women. They cheered maniacally, waving big baggy panties over their heads. He imagined Old Blue Eyes strutting across a proscenium stage, serenading a large audience of blue-haired elderly women - who cheered maniacally, waving big baggy panties over their heads. He imagined Old Blue Eyes strutting across a proscenium stage, serenading a large audience of blue-haired elderly women. They cheered maniacally, waving their big baggy panties. From a style point-of-view there might be a deeper problem that the imagined image over-runs. There might be a decision between expanding the image into a paragraph or cutting it from two ideas to one to avoid distracting from the narrative. The elderly women's cheering and panty-waving might be redundant. Or it might be under-played. If this is Frank Sinatra he was Ol' Blue Eyes with an apostrophe. If you could call him the Chairman of the Board instead it might avoid repeating "blue". The Chairman of the Board, serenading his fans. But it ain't 1942 anymore - it's September. All they've got under their skin now is liver spots and bladder cancer.
He imagined Old Blue Eyes strutting across a proscenium stage, serenading a large audience of blue-haired elderly women who cheered maniacally while waving their big baggy panties ETA He imagined Old Blue Eyes strutting across a proscenium stage as he serenaded a large audience of elderly ladies who cheered maniacally while waving their big, baggy panties like banners. or big baggy panties like flags
The order of adjectives is wrong. should be elderly, blue-haired women ETA -doesn't stop it being clear, just unconventional
I doubt Frank Sinatra "strutted." And the word proscenium - why use words no-one has ever heard of before? I also like to keep the -ing verbs to a minimum. He imagined Ol' Blue Eyes on stage, serenading an audience of blue-haired, elderly ladies. They cheered like maniacs, and waved big baggy panties over their heads.
The sentence *could* be considered unclear as to who is doing the baggy-panty waving, but generally, people will assume Sinatra isn't waving his baggy panties over the women's heads. Most of the alternatives have already been suggested in the other replies. If you wanted to cut out all the continuous verbs entirely, you could write: "He imagined Old Blue Eyes serenading a crowd of elderly ladies, who waved their baggy panties over their blue-rinsed heads." Although this is more getting rid of them for the sake of it, not necessarily to make the writing better. And note you have "blue" in the sentence twice.
He imagined Sinatra upon the stage serenading a raucous crowd of blue-haired grannies. They waved big baggy panties over their heads. I'd chop it down like that. Everything's forced to a simpler tense and a few phrases are condensed. I lost the double blue. The main thing is that those big descriptive clusters are gone. Even with all the -ings pulled out, they make it too choppy IMO. Then I'd decide what I wanted to add back to that. I'd probably edit it: He imagined Sinatra upon the stage serenading a raucous crowd of blue-haired grannies. Pastel pinwheels of baggy panties whirled over their heads. And my ear still picks up a problem on "pastel." Mainly because you get so many nouns with an adjective right in front . . . so I guess I would then try: He imagined Sinatra upon the stage serenading a raucous crowd of blue-haired grannies. Pinwheels of pastel panties whirled over their heads. Though I don't like losing "baggy." I might even lose even more though and end so that it goes back to the MC emotionally: He imagined Sinatra upon the stage serenading a raucous crowd of blue-haired grannies. Pastel pinwheels whirled over their heads. Joe considered this for a moment and grimaced.
That's redundant. A proscenium is a stage so no need to use both nouns. And it's usually used metaphorically, so for an actual stage you may want to drop it. Excellent word though.
