: Re: Does this sentence make sense grammatically? Is there anything I can do to improve it? "The meticulously placed masses of skin under her eyes were captured involuntarily by the customary

@Cooney417

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Just from a 'craft' perspective, the difficulty I have with this sentence is that it uses too many adjectives and some unconventional word choices, and that makes it difficult to visualize what's actually happening. For instance:

The meticulously placed masses of skin under her eyes [...]

I assume that means something in context, but I can't visualize it, in part because no one talks about 'masses' of skin (excepting the context of cancer). A piece of shin, a skin-graft, sure, but a 'mass' conjures up a big lump of flesh, which is a weird image. 'Carefully' would work better than 'meticulously' as well, unless you have a reason to use the less common, fussier adjective. And then this:

[...] were captured involuntarily by the customary light fixtures of the
hospital ward

'Captured' is too active a word, particularly when combined with he word 'masses'; it sounds like something grabbed the lumps of flesh under her eyes. And it's not at all clear what 'involuntarily' means in this context. Whose action is involuntary? The light fixtures'? Anyone reading this will come to a dead stop at this point trying torahs out the references.
You should also allow readers to use their own experience to set the scene: Instead of 'customary light fixtures of the hospital ward' just say 'lights of the hospital ward' Readers know what hospital ward lights look like; they know what's customary, and you don't need to tell them to imagine that. You could be more specific to set the scene more carefully — e.g., use 'lamps' instead of 'lights' to give it an old-time feel, or 'fluorescent bulbs' to make it harsher and more clinical — but 'customary' and 'fixtures' don't add anything to the sentence except more syllables.
The last phrase:

sufficiently polluted with the indistinct clamour of her deranged
relatives

is overdrawn. First, 'sufficiently' is the wrong word, I think; it means 'enough', but what does 'polluted enough' mean in this context? Second, you're mixing a visual image with an aural image (hospital light polluted with indistinct clamor), without creating an explicit metaphor (e.g., "as though the light in the room was polluted by their clamoring"), Third, you've packed at least three separate ideas into this single, short phrase: the idea that the light is tinged by the sounds; the idea that there are relatives in the room speaking indistinctly; the idea that the relatives are themselves deranged. That's too textually dense to make for pleasant reading.
I'd suggest you take the sentence, strip out all the unnecessary adjectives, break it into all the separate ideas you're trying to convey, and then rewrite it as a full paragraph, developing each idea on its own. You can add adjectives back in to give 'color' as you see fit, but start with a simple, clear version and work up.
It feels to me like you're rushing through the description to get to the story, but the story likely won't work unless you take the proper time to develop the scene.

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