Too many fingers
27 October 2023 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeChapter 33 of Arctic Raoul complete at 3398 after editing; total word count now ~122,500.
In this chapter my bugbear was a spate of five finger-references within the space of about 200 words:
I retained "She raised a finger briefly to her lips" as the sole survivor in this passage, though I could have substituted "gestured for silence" or something similar, since we have "took up the ring and set it once more upon her finger" 150 words later, at the start of the next scene -- but it's a different context, and it 'sounds' all right to me. Likewise I note that I managed to duplicate "grasp" in the course of my editing, but that doesn't jump out at me in the way all that finger-feeling did :-p
In this chapter my bugbear was a spate of five finger-references within the space of about 200 words:
- Christine captured Erik's slackening fingers and guided them back to rest → Christine captured Erik's slackening grasp and guided it back to lie in repose
- His hands were fumbling across her fingers → His hands were groping weakly across hers again
- She slipped the slim band from her finger and pressed it into the palm of one questing hand, closing his fingers around it → She drew off her slim wedding band[...] closing his grasp around it
I retained "She raised a finger briefly to her lips" as the sole survivor in this passage, though I could have substituted "gestured for silence" or something similar, since we have "took up the ring and set it once more upon her finger" 150 words later, at the start of the next scene -- but it's a different context, and it 'sounds' all right to me. Likewise I note that I managed to duplicate "grasp" in the course of my editing, but that doesn't jump out at me in the way all that finger-feeling did :-p