Every sentence has to fight for its life, but you have to know the life it’s fighting for. When you know what your story is truly about, you’ll know better what to keep, to perfect, or discard. Then, attend to the finer points of line editing: Revise for clarity. Revise for words that are more accurate, concrete, and alive. Revise sentences so their sound and structure yield the most bang for the buck you intend. Proofread for glitches of punctuation, typos, misspellings, and so on.
