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Repetition is not inherently bad Yes, using the same word over and over again is not a good thing, but repeating a word every once in a while can be a good thing. You might want to repeat certain ...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-12T23:01:19Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32510 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T07:40:54Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32510 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
### Repetition is not inherently bad Yes, using the same word over and over again is not a good thing, but repeating a word every once in a while can be a good thing. You might want to repeat certain words or phrases to emphasize their importance and show how certain characters have a certain style. This can help the reader to easily distinguish characters. For example: - Mary always talks about "a blanket of snow" - Chris like to use long, colorful descriptions like "vast expanses of land glistening with thick layers of virgin snow" - Donny is straight-forward: "sheets of snow" - Jenny jumps from expression to expression, depending on who she is talking to or who has talked to her It's normal to have "favourite" words or phrases that you regularly use. Our active vocabulary is quite small compared with our passive vocabulary and very small compared with the complete vocabulary of the language we are speaking. ### How to avoid repetition if you identified that you are repeating stuff too often If you are repeating certain words or phrases too often or out-of-character you may want to take some time off and look at it later. It's enough to just let the first chapter sit while you are writing on other chapters, but it would be even better to for example write a little short story with a different topic. A few days later you will read the text again and realize which parts sound good and which sound not-so-good. Then you can go into the details: what is it that is not sounding good enough? You will easily identify it after reading it a second or maybe third time. Just be careful not to write a chapter and immediately re-read it again - you will be blind for the little details and unconciously skip past the stuff that you are trying to identify.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2018-01-12T08:38:31Z (almost 7 years ago)
Original score: 1