Hey everyone. We have finally arrived at the last post of this series. I am so excited that I was finally able to do this series. I’ve been building up to it for a while and am rather pleased with how well it turned out. So, without further ado…
Prose: Repetition
Today we are going to talk about repetition in writing prose. Repetition can be both a good and bad thing when it comes to writing. Too much repetition can make your story seem amateurish and not cohesive. But repetition can also be used to bring attention to something specific or increase the importance of certain situations or actions.
Repetition that should be avoided
There are a few types of repetitions that should be avoided. The first type is avoiding the repetition of tropes. As mentioned before in cliches – some tropes are around because they are useful and relatable and should be used in certain situations. That said, tropes should be used sparingly to avoid making tropes into cliches. Repeating a trope multiple times in several different books (unless you are trying to make using that trope a part of your style – which you should be careful with) repeating a trope too often can make it useless.
Repeating certain character types also falls along the lines of character tropes. If every character in your book falls into a very specific character type, then your characters become boring, flat characters with nothing interesting about them that might intrigue your reader. Having one or two characters that fit in a trope can make the characters who don’t more interesting but just like tropes character archetypes should also be used sparingly.
You should also avoid the repetition of common phrases that might be cliché in the specific genre that you are writing. For example, if the phrase, ‘it suddenly dawned on me’ if in your writing and you are writing some sort of YA fiction – you might want to cut that phrase or come up with some way to rephrase it. Some people like having common repetitive phrases in their books but not all of them do.
Avoiding repeating words in the same sentence is also important to avoid your writing sounding like a kid wrote it. For example, “He swung his big sword around and hit the other man’s weapon with his sword.” Sounds a little weird – partly because sword is mentioned twice in the same sentence. Not a perfect example but one better way to write it might be, “He swung his sword around to clash into the man’s spear – cleaving it clean through.” Sounds better and avoids repetition.
Repetition to include sometimes.
Overusing anything in writing can create big problems for your writing and make things sound a bit strange or a bit cliché. However, there are some times when repetition can be used to emphasize a point or bring attention to someone’s actions.
For example, let’s say that your character has some sort of phobia of touching – this could be because of past trauma, this could be because of some sort of neurodivergence like autism, or perhaps it’s just a weird quirk you assigned to your character because it helps with the plot, and you haven’t figured out why yet. Either way – let’s take this character and use repetition to emphasize this point.
He clenched his jaw as he looked at me and I could almost see the thoughts swirling through his head. He didn’t understand it. He didn’t get it. I couldn’t explain it again, it would be too hard. Without warning he reached out to grab my wrist. I looked down at where he was touching me. He was touching me.
As you can see in this short example there is some worded repetition at the end of the sentence that is similar to what we discussed avoiding in the earlier section – however, in this case, the repetition is being used to emphasize her dislike for the emotion. The combination of repetition and shorter syntax conveys her fear at being touched without the writer ever having to say, “She’s scared about being touched.”
Repetition of character types and tropes can be useful as mentioned in the previous section to help create contrast between characters or between plot points. Perhaps at the very beginning of your story – for a chapter or two – your characters are written in such a way that indicates in some way that they are a certain character type or trope. And then suddenly, you change it and give them more depth to help the reader realize that they misunderstood the character at the beginning of the story. Maybe this is the whole point or maybe this is used to facilitate a plot twist. Either way repetition of certain tropes a few times in this case can be used without seeming to be too much.
I hope that this helps you understand a little bit more about repetition in prose. There are times when something should be repeated and times when it should not. Those times change depending on the type of story that you are writing and the types of points that you are trying to make. As long as the repetition is used for a purpose and that purpose is realized by either both your editor and your reader – then it was executed correctly, and you can continue to use repetition effectively.
Thank you for sticking around for the whole Prose series. I hope you enjoyed reading this one just as much as I enjoyed writing it. I can’t wait to come back for 3 stand alone posts followed by the announcement of a new series. Stick around through the next few stand-alone posts and you will be able to hear the new announcement. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, become a blog page member, share, and follow me on social media at the link on the bottom of the page. And remember,
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
Comments