Blog 2: Cut it out!

Repetition Repetition

Hello again! I want to address a tricky little blighter that has a nasty habit of creeping into your writing. There you are churning out some beautiful prose, when BAM! Repetition strikes! I’m not referring to the repetition used, such as the power of three, where repetition is used intentionally to make a point, like politicians in a speech. But the kind of repetition that repeats so much that it feels like every other word is repeated, where it is getting predicable. It feels like a curry repeating, leaving a dodgy taste in your mouth, that just repeats without end and without mercy. I mean, it tasted good first time around but now, you just want it to go away.

How many times have I used the word repeat or repetition above? Did you begin to get annoyed or bored? Maybe you switched off entirely or began to question my sanity. This is something a lot of writers do – not question my sanity, well maybe some do – but use the same words and phrases. It’s like they have subconscious go-to words that keep popping up, sometimes several times in the same sentence - eeek.

And it isn’t just words, but characters’ actions too. They may do an awful lot of nodding, blinking or sighing – where they appear to have some sort of tic disorder. Of course, if it’s important to the story or part of the character’s personality, then it absolutely should be there. But if it isn’t, and you don’t address it, then the flow will be disrupted, distracting your reader, catapulting them out of the story. It’s like being smacked on the head every few minutes while you are trying to watch a film. Painful, right?

It isn’t just beginners who struggle with this though. There are very skilled, experienced authors that jump into their stories, carefully laying out the plot, character arcs, setting the scene and use fantastic dialogue, but they are so focused on all these big picture details, that certain wording here and there is very easily missed.

That is where an editor comes in, because no matter how much you read it yourself, you may not be aware of just how much of that dodgy curry is in there. Our brains are like a little autocorrect that tell us what should be there, instead of what is. Bless it, it thinks it’s helping. Which is also the reason why we can spend hours and hours of proofreading just to finish up with spelling mistakes, missing punctation and incorrect grammar – arrrgh!

A good tip to catch the curry before it spills all over your book, is to read your work aloud. You can get your computer to do this if you prefer. This way, you can actually hear when the rhythm of a sentence is off because you have used too many tos, buts or ands, for example.

Next time you go over your draft, put your critical head on and see if you can spot them. There are easy fixes, either using an alternative, which google can help with; or rejig the sentence and cut it out altogether. In fact, you may find the words are obvious to the reader, and don’t need to be there at all. I don’t know about you guys, but I find cutting out wording from my stories is quite therapeutic – kind of like a good spring clean, but better, because the kids can’t come in and ruin it!

Getting to know yourself as a writer by editing, rephrasing and refining your work is an effective way of improving your skills, challenging yourself and getting more out of your creative journey. So, go on, have a look and make notes of the words you seem to favour, then refer back to it to avoid getting stuck in the same ruts. Let me know what kind of words, actions or phrases you have unknowingly repeated, maybe I’m using them too.