Ensuring that each paragraph flowed naturally and played its role in the overall discourse involved long, painstaking hours, punctuated with flashes of insight.

The severity of the wounds on her sister's face had forced many painstaking hours of microsurgery, and most of Savannah's face and neck had been bandaged.

But two and a half painstaking hours had finally yielded their prize, and Sean met Tamman's grin with one of his own.

He'd replaced the gingerbread on the house during those years, spending painstaking hours in the school shop, because he didn't have the tools at home, whenever he didn't have to work.

Stilgar's teaching, the painstaking hours on the sand, overshadowed all else.

Locke redoubled his concentration, falling back into the rhythm he'd learned over so many painstaking hours as a boy - moving the picks slightly, feeling for sensations.

Having devoted hundreds of unpaid, painstaking hours to the rectory matter, however, the commission could hardly be expected to soldier on, after such a vote of "no confidence" from the town board.

So we put a lot of painstaking hours into developing this album.

Typically, the easy-to-assemble set took us painstaking hours to erect.

He spent 400 painstaking hours on the dresses.