This may not occur to you when you are starting out as a writer, but any time spent reading your work aloud is time well spent. Usually, when you stumble over a phrase, it's a cast iron indication the phrase does not ring true. Perhaps it's the literary
equivalent of the flicker in the gaze which betrays a lie. It's certainly a useful ploy you can put to good use in your work: when you have finished a
paragraph or a page or a chapter, if you read it out loud to yourself
and note which sentences trip you up, you will usually find that the
structure is awkward or the syntax awry, or that you have loaded on too
much alliteration. You can bet your bottom dollar that something won't
be quite right.
It may feel like a self-conscious exercise to begin
with, and you mustn't get carried away by the richness/polish/perfection of your own prose, but it's well worth doing.
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