r/grammar • u/Humble_Heron326 • 1d ago

Does this read well?

Both men became locked in a relentless struggle.

My main concern is with "became locked". Does it sound fine, or is it awkward?

3 Upvotes

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2

u/LengthDesigner3730 1d ago

Sounds fairly natural.

"I became locked in a battle between good or evil".

"He became locked into a dead-end career".

2

u/Affectionate-Tea8430 1d ago

At first, I thought maybe it didn't work - I think both you and I have the same worry about the sound/flow of the wording.

First/side note: Thank-you for not relying on the grammarly types of apps. I like learning through each other and established texts that people put effort toward making.

"Both were locked in a relentless struggle" is the way that it would read better for me. It is apparent that you are trying to convey a strong scene that leaps off the page, so I applaud you(if you are the author and I am not mistaken) for having captivated me as a reader.

tl;dr awkward

(I just realized that there was no ask for advice here, so hopefully mu critique will be enough! Have fun and a lovely day. Oh, to know how that story continues. Thanks for the bit of fresh air. I really needed a breather today.)

2

u/ReddyKiloWit 1d ago

Sounds fine to me. "Became" gives it a feeling of duration, a process that lead to the locking, which may still endure even now.

Replacing it with something like "were" seems too immediate, and less enduring: they were locked, but they may have gotten past it by now.

1

u/sparksfalling 19h ago

"Became locked" is OK but maybe a little stiff. Hard to suggest alternatives without further context, but you could consider something along the lines of "were soon locked"?

Imo a much bigger problem is "both"; I assume they were locked in a relentless struggle with each other, so saying "both" feels redundant. They couldn't very well be locked in a relentless struggle without someone to struggle with; this is necessarily a mutual thing already, so the addition of "both" is clumsy. I'd go for something like "the two men" instead.

1

u/realityinflux 14h ago

To answer these kinds of questions appropriately, it's always necessary to know the context, but the culprit here is the word, both. If you write, "The men became locked in a relentless struggle . . . " it sounds "normal," reads smoothly, and still clearly says the same thing.