How would you write this to make it sound less, forced? Or pretentious?

I would

remove "anathema" (why use that?) and use a phrase/word that evokes visceral feeling of "shock of cold"

fix the "shock of cold ... sickness" clause in general: it's split between dispassionate third-person narration ("remember, he has a sickness") and visceral feeling ("the SHOCK of cold made him feel like SHIT because he was already SICK!!!!!!!"). It straddles clinical description of character's situation + attempt to make reader experience the character's action, at the same time

"to swim upwards" has the same problem sorta. Is he coming to his senses, and then deciding (feeling an instinct, impulse? desperately resolving to do something..?), or are you just describing "what he did" from the third person?

also, "to swim upwards" isn't right if what you mean is "he did x in order to y."

also, put the second clause before the first, because it proceeds it temporally, logically, and narratively:
>Visceral shock of cold, exacerbating feeling of sick-weakness (?)
>RESULTS IN
>Snapping back to his senses (animal survival instinct?)
>RESULTS IN
>Desperation/resolve to escape the water
>RESULTS IN
>Decision to swim, or instinctive swimming, to the surface

>>9971234
>Why use that
well I think I used it wrong, to be honest, which is why Im taking it out.

To rephrase, the shock of the cold water temporarily removed all the effects of sickness on him, he regains his senses from the delirium of the nausea, then swims upwards to not drown.
I am describing what he did in the third person.

Forgive me, I am amateur as fuck.
I guess the reader is meant to empathize with his own feelings, so the tone I want is visceral, yes.

Also thank you very kindly for the feedback.

>>9971234
"His head hit the water, and the sudden shock of cold overwhelmed his sickness as he turned his body to swim to the surface"

Am I going in the right or wrong direction here?

>>9971208
the second half is its own independent statement, and grammatically it's a fragment. put a period after upwards and finish the thought of the other part.

>>9971275
The idea was I was going for was that the sudden cold more or less removed all his nausea temporarily, and then he regained himself to swim back up.

>>9971208
>"He came to his senses to swim upwards, the sudden shock of cold an anathema to his sickness"

Stop writing genre fiction faggot

>>9971327
I do what I want and you will never stop me

>>9971283
alright I see it, you're going to have to do a bit of tooling around because >>9971273 "overwhelmed" still doesn't drive at what's going on. Be careful about using metaphor or figurative language for banal details.

>>9971328
I do not even presume I could ever make you stop sucking cock, don't worry

>>9971263
I am amateur as fuck too so feel free to tell me to go fuck myself nigga

>I guess the reader is meant to empathize with his own feelings, so the tone I want is visceral, yes.

In my opinion you do that well with "shock of cold" (makes me remember/experience the feeling of sudden shock of cold) but not with "his sickness" in >>9971273

A description of what FEELING the FEELING of "cold" is overwhelming, rather than the clinical state itself, would maybe be better. I know what you mean by the miserable malaise feeling of being sick, and I can understand how you want to capture the sudden icy chill abruptly yanking the character out of that malaise ("yank" is a good example of a visceral, actiony word). But it doesn't come across in "overwhelmed his sickness." It's like my body tenses up with you when you say
>The SHOCK of COLD
but then there's no pay off when it reverts to flat description afterward.

Random examples, not meant to be good or anything, with actiony words highlighted
>He [plunged] into the water
>The [sudden] [shock] of cold [jolted] him back to his senses
>He [scrambled] for the surface
or even things like
>Every muscle in his body tensed at once, and the animal inside him began clawing for the surface.

I think you should always step back and go, what's the main POINT of what I'm trying to say here, and what is the bare skeleton of logic that makes that point? In this case the point is something like, [a] describing an action that is [b] rapidly executed, even surprising, and that [c] makes the reader feel what the character is feeling.

>>9971332
is "overwhelmed" too figurative? I mean that is what happens.

>>9971347
Go fuck yourself, my nigga.

anyway
"He plunged head first into the water, the sudden shock of cold shaking the sickness from him as he scrambled back to the surface"

Based on your examples, is it more aesthetic to read?

>>9971338
Admitting your weakness is the first step to recovery

"A sudden shock of cold cured his seasickness, but having realized the cold source as being the depths of the sea, he began to swim upwards."

>>9971362
Now I'm being nitpicky but I think you have the same writer's tic that I have, namely, wanting to smush too many things together by using "as" or simultaneous clauses introduced by comma splices

The temporal/narrative logic of the events is that the scrambling was an EFFECT of (therefore, came after) the sudden shock.

I think you can easily get away with the shock being simultaneous with the plunging (because that's how human beings think of those events, intuitively - the plunging itself *was* a shock), but you have to allow the reader to move to the next "beat" to understand the scrambling was the immediate (even instantaneous) result of that shock.

"He came; to his senses, to swim upwards, the sudden orgasm an anathema to his sickness"

>>9971387
I am told I use a lot of long sentences, and I do have a tendency to create runons, but I am no longer sure how to rewrite it. My brain is full stop

>>9971362
>is "overwhelmed" too figurative? I mean that is what happens.
It's the main word that signals what's happening and as such doesn't slot in as well. You're introducing new information remember, and the reader is not inside your head. I would modify the way you put it here >>9971283

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Thank you for the feedback, helpful internet strangers!

>the sudden shock of cold water woke him from his sickness induced stupor and he swam upward to the surface.