When revising, I make multiple passes through my manuscript. In my editing, I find sentences that make me uncomfortable. This is not a grammar issue but one of meaning and flow. Sometimes, I have visited and revisited these lines and have not found a solution. I find revising exhausting and fear that laziness may have a part in my plight. If I make too great a change, it requires reworking a section of the chapter.
So, in my revisions, I have three techniques to ameliorate these phrases.
It may be that a sentence is awkward, and rewording will make it behave in the setting without disrupting the moment in the book. I will confess, I rarely reword a passage after multiple passes. I have a style that leans toward archaic constructs. While this irritates some beta readers, I console myself because I was borrowing a phrase from Twain or some English writer I admire.
When a sentence isn’t working, I sometimes explore alternatives to the keyword in the sentence. I keep the thesaurus tab on Chrome handy and check for other words that clearly state what I am feeling. I urge caution here, as “thesaurus writers” can irritate more than slightly clumsy sentences. Reading a book that describes a pencil as a writing implement puts me off my feed. After all, I don’t want to use equipage rather than carriage, lest I sound like Mr. Collins.
At this point, I often find myself looking at a sentence or part of a sentence, having had no success in revising, and I am still uncomfortable.
My last and often used solution is to cut the phrase from the sentence or cut the entire sentence or paragraph. It is all too possible that the sentence was necessary (or I thought it was necessary) early in the drafting, and now that the plot has been fleshed out, the problematic phrase is best omitted.
This third solution has held me in good stead and may well be the most satisfying solution. I omit the offending words and don’t fret because the old wording has been saved in earlier versions of the manuscript. What was irritating me was sentiment or information no longer needed in my story.
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