: How can I avoid word repetition in the following paragraph? Eri knelt down slowly and thought about her world. The one with the solid ground in which she had stood all her life. Would

Eri knelt down slowly and thought about her world. The one with the
solid ground in which she had stood all her life. Would that surface
break apart one day? And when it did, what would happen to her?
Perhaps she would end up floating aimlessly in a vast nothingness. Her
feet never touching the ground again. Her hands never finding anything
to hold onto.

I've been trying to edit this for about an hour. It's like a chess dilemma I created myself. I can't replace ground with surface because I'm already using it in the next sentence. And it seems like feet never touching the ground is the most natural way of saying it. I think feet touching the soil and feet touching the land sound strange.

Does anyone have a simple, effective way to solve this?

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@Dunderdale623

Replace the the.

That ground.
Any ground.
That or any other ground.

That way this is no longer a repetition, but a back-reference.

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@Carla500

"touching the earth." A native speaker would use that phrasing. "Earth" in this context has the double meaning of literal soil and "the earth," the planet.

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@Kevin153

One simple, effective way to solve it: Stop editing. It's fine.

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: How can I avoid word repetition in the following paragraph? Eri knelt down slowly and thought about her world. The one with the solid ground in which she had stood all her life. Would

More posts by @Candy753

: Are collection of short stories more likely to sell than single short stories? I'm about to finish a short story (9000 words). But since I already have another two (7000 words and 6000 words),

: Choosing a word according to its length Within a moment, a girl approached the table, holding a huge birthday cake with twenty flickering candles on it. They illuminated/lit everything

: Is it a bad practice to end sentences with phrases like: "...and went over to it" or "...and did X to it?" I often find myself writing stuff like this: Eri's eyes scanned the room, stopping

: Worried that my opening is not gripping enough This is the beginning of a novel I'm writing (not the final draft): The hiking trail consisted of pairs of uneven stone steps. On both

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