A Writer’s Perspective : Repetition
When you’re deeply embedded in a medium as an ”insider” it changes how you interact with it. Actors and cinematographers watch movies differently; painters and sculptors cast a sharper eye on museum exhibits; and authors read books with a more analytical eye and possibly higher standards. Sometimes it can even be difficult to detach from the role of creator when switching to consumer, but this is largely individual and dependent on both the observer and the observed.
Regardless of whether you’re able to completely let go of your inner editor or whether you automatically scrutinise every line when opening your next summer read, reading a variety of books is probably the single richest way to cultivate your own skills, techniques and perspectives as a writer. The simplest secret to being a good writer is being a good reader: not just eating up lines on a page, but thoughtfully engaging with the material and asking questions about it.
Did this character action make sense with what I know about the character so far?
Does this description create an immersive atmosphere, or is the environment a blur?
Why did – or didn’t – this dialogue hit so well?
This doesn’t mean you should read every book like you’re a paid editor, but occasionally engaging in this way is the cheapest possible learning material – plus you get to enjoy a new story. Or somehow grind your way through to the end, carried by the knowledge of how much you’re learning about the dont’s of writing.
Inspired by my experiences, I decided to make a series of it: lessons I’ve learned from books both good and bad, takeaways from literature that made me pay more attention to certain phenomena in my own works and sharpened my eye. The best part? Even finishing a bad book becomes worth it, because things that don’t work perfectly illustrate what not to do.
Welcome to the first part: Repetition.
Beware Repeating the Repetition
Repetition can be like a sharp knife or a really annoying mosquito that won’t leave you alone. Used well, it can drive home a specific point and echo thematics in a subtle way.
Used unconsciously or badly, it’s just…bad. (Pun intended).
Repetition can sneak in under multiple guises and on many story levels. I was inspired to write this particular article due to a specific book I recently read and shall leave unnamed, but all you need to know is that it really took home Olympic gold in the repetition department – to the degree I started thinking I was going crazy, asking myself whether the whole book wasn’t just a series of near-identical AI prompts and I was stuck in a bizarre plot loop with…no plot, actually. Finishing it was quite a pain, but boy, did I extract some gold out of the process, even if by tooth and nail.
I’ll go through how to avoid accidentally repeating things like actions and events, but also certain expressions, descriptions, character actions, how the snow always glints and glitters and someone always rolls their eyes like it’s their single most important trait. There’s an art to repeating an element tastefully and purposefully, and using the same ”he shrugged” because you can’t come up with anything more interesting.
Character Repetitions
Giving characters their own quirks and pet actions is good distinctive writing, but weaving these ”tags” in naturally requires attention. Don’t just say ”X limped across the room” every time they show up on page, but find ways to incorporate their unique trait in subtle ways:
”He leaned his weight on the corner of the table.”
”They waited to let her catch up on the lawn.”
”She rubbed her knee, shoulders hung low.”
Use little things that remind the reader this character has a limp, but you don’t need to spell it out every time. It shows up in the way they move through the world, how they’re affected internally and externally, and becomes a natural part of the character instead of a pasted-on label that yells ”Hey! This is their unique thing! Do you see it? Do you?”
Trust the intelligence of the reader to understand that they still limp if it’s been established as a permanent trait in the book so far. If you want to continuously bring up a trait because it’s important to the character and the story, simply find ways to do so in an artistic way: use different words, describe it from a different perspective, broaden your vision of whatever it is you’re describing.
”She smiled like the summer sun.”
» Not the worst sentence I suppose, but if you use this exact phrase more than a couple of times readers are going to notice and it starts sounding like a crutch.
You want to use summer to describe her joyous, light, luminous presence?
Expand the theme, and use it to describe the whole person:
”The freckles on her face like wildflowers scattered in the fields of Tuscany.”
”She entered the room and the curtains in his mind flapped open, as if a fragrant June wind had blown in and chased out the dust.”
”Her scent of tangerine and sun-burnt hay did not fit in the shadows of the terrace but overwhelmed it, overwhelmed him, as she brushed past with steps light as dandelion tufts, unreachable as a fata morgana on the crest of a heatwave.”
The last one might be packing in a little too much, but these illustrate how you can weave poetry out of your repetitive thematics instead of making readers chew on the same piece of grass through the book.
Honorable mentions: Smirked, rolled eyes, brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, smirked, sighed, smiled shyly, ROLLED EYES…bla bla bla.
There’s a whole world of these irritants out there, and I might make an article about their insidious effect on literature all unto itself one day. These fall into the category of character actions that aren’t bad in themselves, but are simply so overused by now that you don’t want to scatter them around too liberally. I know – I use them too, but I strive to do so mindfully and only if there’s really no other expression that could capture the specific effect I’m going for. Minus points if your characters are constantly doing one of these actions as their ”quirky” trait. (Hint: it’s not quirky. It is vexing.)
If you give a character a specific tic, try make it a little more interesting than constantly biting their lip or their eyes widening all the time. Overused actions unfortunately give the impression of lazy and amateurish writing, even if the action genuinely suits the situation.
Structural Repetitions
Repetitions can also creep in in the way you start or finish chapters or reuse specific paragraph structures over and over again.
Does every chapter start with the character waking up or thinking something for two paragraphs?
Are characters always eating or sitting in the living room or driving somewhere?
Does every chapter end with a similar sentiment, expression or situation?
Is there always a cliffhanger? (Note: not a good idea to overdo this in general. Gets old real quick)
Structural repetitions can be hard to notice in the writing process, because the critical editor eye is hopefully peacefully slumbering and we’re just letting the contents of our subconscious sprawl onto the page. This is why going through the book in post and noting down any instances of structural repetition is so important: readers will notice if you begin five chapters in a row with the same description of a glittery wintery landscape blanketed in snow, or have each chapter follow a similar formula where the friends go somewhere, have an event and a conversation, and go home.
This can show up in a tendency to always describe a new place in similarly structured paragraphs, or recycle dialogue formats, or simply use too many sentences of the same length and cadence. Sometimes you read a book. It’s written like this. The character blushes. Then they reach for the coffee. And the coffee is hot. They almost spill it. Where are the commas? Nobody knows. They have gotten lost. In the bottom of the coffee pot. Spilling the coffee will not retrieve them.
Anything can be used for stylistic effect, but I have also struggled through a book that had the problem of repetition on a sentence structure level, and despite having a generally good premise and plot, the going was rough. There’s a huge difference between having a specific writing style and thinking your stilted sentences make you the next Hemingway.
Descriptive Repetitions
Some physical descriptions don’t need to be constantly repeated even when they do repeat. Whilst it’s important to not simply drop descriptions after the first introduction, there’s an art to delicately blending in reminders that the character has auburn hair or the door to the Victorian manor is full of deep gouges. If you describe a character always wearing their hair in a low bun, eventually you’ll only need to throw in the occasional ”ever-present bun” or ”was as stuck in her habits as her hairstyle,” and we get the point. Describing the same thing every time we see X is useless and feels like filler. Only mention a fixed feature when:
a) Something about it changes
b) It’s directly relevant to the scene
(adds depth, plot material, humor, context, meaning, symbolism…aka it matters)
It also depends on how unique and important the feature is to begin with. You’d describe that gouged door with a lot more flair and detail when it shows up on page due to its novelty and mystery value, whereas you really don’t have to mention how Timmy wears grey corduroy pants each time he’s in the office. Exceptions exist, of course, especially for comic effect, and when the thing described symbolises something more fundamental about the object/person. It can be used as a clever symbolic device, like describing someone who always wears something red or a garden where the rest of the flowers change but the black tulips bloom every single year. Now you’re playing with deeper narrative meanings instead of going copy-pasta on ”she smiled shyly into her cozy sweater” a dozen times.
Voice Repetitions
Repetitive crutches in prose can easily proliferate across POVs and can be one of the main culprits for different POVs sounding the same. If you encounter a case of POV confusion where the characters seem to have the same vocabulary, same syntax, even the same exclamations and thoughts, you’ve stumbled on a bad case of voice repetition.
There’s a pretty easy surface fix: get a Thesaurus. Oof, spicy! You usually hear seasoned writers urging you to throw it away and simply use said, but if I see ”soft, warm glow” used to describe light one more time the book is what I’ll be throwing across the room. Fundamentally you should, of course, create characters that are different enough in the first place, with distinct voices and thoughts, which is a feat no word-swapping is going to achieve. When you do use the Thesaurus, don’t just mindlessly substitute words with something fancy you barely understand, but use synonyms to stretch your creative foundations from the ground up. The more material you amass in your little grey cells, the more it interacts and has the chance of producing something a little more catchy than ”sweltering heat” or ”flushed cheeks”. Many such phrases, again, are absolutely fine on their own, but unless you’re actually working on your prose I’m going to take a wild guess that these darlings are surrounded by their cousins ”eyes wide with wonder” and, ugh, ”shy smile” (can you tell it haunts me).
Save cliché expressions for those moments when nothing else really works and they might get passed over as invisible words, or better yet, become un-clichéd due to the brilliance of the sentece they rest in. clichés rarely come alone, nor do they do massive damage as isolated incidents, but like cackling chickens, they tend to like company when running all over your literary flower beds. Overreliance on blasé phrases, dialogues and whatnot is simply a sign that you have work to do in the prose department. If you really put effort into your prose, the occasional ”shining eyes” will hardly be noticed and might even feel like a smart move.
Conclusion
Repetition is a double-edged sword that requires some thought and attention to be used effectively. At its best, it shines as a stylistic device that enhances the richness of the story. At its worst, it makes the reader feel like they’re running a neverending gauntlet of the same obstacles behind every bend. Hopefully this breakdown gave you some helpful tips on what to pay attention to, so we can make the literary world better one manuscript at a time.
I bet there’s other types of repetitions that I didn’t cover here, and you’ll know them when you see them in the wild. Do you have any pet peeves when it comes to repetition, or ways you’ve seen it used brilliantly? Let me know in the comments!
Un-repetitive writing,
x The Foxglove Scribe
The Foxglove Scribe 