: Is it better to omit phrases like: after a moment, after a while, for a moment, etc? I also find myself writing stuff like this: (dialogue) They remained silent for a moment. A

Vote Up Vote Down

Using "after a moment" isn't that bad, but don't use it a whole lot. There are different phrases you could use to describe passage of time, like:

•minutes later
•after some time
•a while later
•after a long pause
•following a brief pause

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

There's nothing wrong with phrases like "after a moment". Just be careful not to overuse them.

If you find yourself writing:

Al entered the room. After a moment, Sally entered also. A moment later, Al said, "Oh, Sally, it's you." Sally paused for a moment ...

Using the same word or phrase (other than an article, pronoun, or short preposition) repeatedly in a short space tends to look awkward.

As John Landsberg says, in some cases you could replace the "after a moment" with some action. In other cases you could simply omit it. I'd say that the only time you should include it is when you intend to convey that nothing happened in that moment, that everyone was just waiting or standing dumbly.

For example:

Bob picked up the book and opened to where he had left off. After a little while, he put it back down.

The "after a little while" contributes nothing. Indeed it leaves the statement ambiguous. Is the intent that he was reading for a little while, that he just stood staring blankly at the pages, that he was thinking about something else, or what? Better to say what he did than just say that time passed.

On the other hand:

Cathy burst into the room and announced to her family, "I've decided to marry Bob!" She was met with total silence. After a moment, her father said slowly, "I suppose the wedding will have to wait until Bob gets out of prison ..."

Here, the idea that everyone stands around saying nothing for a little while contributes to the mood.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

In my opinion, the passage of a moment is better expressed by filling it with some action. To illustrate, let's rewrite your last example: "After a moment, he decided to walk west."

How about this? "He looked to the east. In that direction lay nothing but the ruins of his former life. Turning away, he decided to walk west." Or: "Thinking about what she had said, he decided to walk west."

These are merely hypothetical, first-draft samples of random possibilities, but they demonstrate that creative writing works best when words (and opportunities) are not wasted. Merely stating that a moment of time passed wastes the opportunity to convey what actually happened in that moment.

On the other hand, there may be nothing valuable to convey about a particular moment; there may be no content worth communicating, in which case it's a good idea to try to eliminate the statement. In your sentence, "His stomach started to growl after a moment, and only then he realized he was hungry," the phrase "after a moment" is entirely unnecessary. Cut it out, and you'll see that the sentence works even better. If it is essential to the story that the stomach growling must be shown to have started at some point distinctly after some other point in time, then again I would suggest making something happen in that crucial moment, thus: "The window of a restaurant caught his eye, and he stopped to look inside. As if on cue, a waiter appeared, carrying a tray of plates laden with food. His stomach started to growl...."

(0)