How to avoid repetitive sentences? (Describing actions, he/she)

If I am not addressing your question about repetitiveness, clarify it and I will edit.

I do see a few problems with your prose. In no particular order:

1) I don't understand the value of "urged". The speech doesn't sound like urging, it sounds like agreement, and speaks for itself. Just 'said' would suffice.

The part following should be in past tense, like the rest: 'as she took ... and moved aside ...'. For myself, I'd break the sentence to say 'She'd almost forgotten there was...', but that sentence is not clear. It sounds like he thinks he is there for one reason and she has an ulterior reason; in which case I would likely write it more explicitly, like 'She'd almost forgotten the ruse that brought him here.'

Also, "he glanced," not glancing. I think you are trying to 'tack on' actions to dialogue or other actions, when another sentence would be fine, or a recast sentence would be fine. "As he entered, he glanced around the room, as if finding his bearings."

2) Thoughtfully: If the POV is hers, what makes her think his glances are thoughtful, rather than say, suspicious or cautious or gaining his orientation in a new room?

3) 'circled the room'. This is generally used in a literal sense, physically walking around the room. Which cannot be done in 'a few moments'. Maybe he looked about the room, or scanned the room, or surveyed it, or found his bearings.

4) 'Barely': Why would somebody inspecting your apartment or property "ease your nerves" even the slightest bit? Inspection implies judgment and few people become more at ease being judged.

5) 'Suddenly': This implies an unexpected action; but surely she was waiting for him to say something.

Use alternatives to "he said" and "she said" very sparingly. It is fine to add characterizations of vocal intonation separately. "Oh, of course!" she said, her jangled nerves apparent in her voice.

For readers "he said" and "she said" are nigh on invisible, other single word attributions [urged, whined, whispered, cried, exclaimed, etc] are harder to process, and separate descriptions actually flow better. If you need one of those words, it may be more clear to put it up front. Kristen whispered so only Jack could hear her. "Try that again and I'll break your finger."

You should be breaking up dialogue with action or thoughts or setting exposition (description of the environment). You could have put your 'canvas and chairs' in such an exposition while the guy surveys the room, or in HER thoughts about what HE might be seeing, or thinking.

In this case, I might write (depending on your POV restrictions):

He entered and took a few steps into the room, looking about to gain his bearings. As he did, she put the snacks on the table against the wall, locked the door, and turned to approach the closest of the two chairs she had set, on opposite sides of the canvas in the middle of the floor. His inspection did not ease her nervousness.

He turned to ask, "Where should I sit?"

The question surprised her.

In the most obvious possible place? she thought.

Instead she said, "Just here, please," gesturing to the chair opposite her own.

Don't be in a rush to finish the scene "efficiently". In fiction people are reading for entertainment, they are almost never in a rush to have their entertainment over as soon as possible. So while we don't want to be repetitive in our descriptions, and do not want to describe what is irrelevant to the story (it might be irrelevant to describe the snacks, chairs, or previous history of the canvas as a painting tarp, or how well this guy is dressed, or his apparently self-taught haircut), it is okay to spend as many words as you like on what should be described in the scene.

You want economy in writing only in the sense that you need to pick a handful (around three) elements to describe, but there is no need to mince words too severely in those descriptions.

Where I think you have gone a little awry is that you have stumbled into an "efficient" method that doesn't use many words or sentences. Then a reluctance to use more words, sentences and paragraphs leaves you with a monotone style. Which becomes tiresome.

posted about 7 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Amadeus‭

3156 reputation 2 1399 613 37

First and foremost, I would suggest that you resist the urge to describe everything that happens in a scene. In a movie, all the actions of a scene like that are acted out and are visible on screen, though it might take several viewings before you actually saw everything that every actor was doing. But that is the nature of how we operate in the world. We don't take in every detail of every action of every person in every moment of our lives. We practice selective attention. Without selective attention, we would not be able to function in the busy complex noisy environments we live in. (Defects in our ability to practice selective attention can be debilitating disorders making it impossible for people to live normal lives.)

So, a movie can throw all that detail up on screen and allow the viewer's natural talent for selective attention to take in the scene as they will. If they did not saturate the scene in that way, I suspect, the viewer would find the scene very unnatural, even though they are not actually taking in all the details of the busy scene.

But prose is very different. Prose forces each word and sentence into the foreground one at a time. It gives the reader little opportunity for practicing selective attention (except by skipping, and we obviously don't want to encourage that). So the writer has to practice selective attention on the reader's behalf. Much of the power of the novel as an art form lies in this as it allows the writer to direct the reader's attention to a greater degree than any other art form.

But it also means that we must work very hard to make sure that we only bring forward those elements of a scene that really matter. Detail for detail's sake, detail to show off how keen an observer you are, is never a good thing. Detail must serve the arc and theme of the story. Neither brevity not richness is a virtue in itself, it is all about how the details chosen and the way they are presented serve the arc and theme of the story.

If your text seem repetitive, therefore, the problem is very likely not in the prose but in the choice of detail. Choose the right detail and the prose you choose to express it is not the first concern. Simple and straightforward is usually best, but even that is not the make or break concern. It is all about choosing the right detail to show, much more than it is about the right way to show it.

No one could say for certain which details in the passage you shared are the right ones, because that depends on the larger context of the story, but it seems to me that much of what is there is mere busy detail, not crucial to what is going on in the scene. Everything in a scene should mean something? Is that the case for your scene?

posted about 7 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Mark Baker‭

4371 reputation 12 1104 744 58