Ritt-Wu@?s algorithm of characteristic sets is the most representative for triangularizing sets of multivariate polynomials. Pseudo-division is the main operation used in this algorithm. In this paper we present a new algorithmic scheme for computing generalized characteristic sets by introducing other admissible reductions than pseudo-division. A concrete subalgorithm is designed to triangularize polynomial sets using selected admissible reductions and several effective elimination strategies and to replace the algorithm of basic sets (used in Ritt-Wu@?s algorithm). The proposed algorithm has been implemented and experimental results show that it performs better than Ritt-Wu@?s algorithm in terms of computing time and simplicity of output for a number of non-trivial test examples