A short story consists of about 5,000 words, give or take. A novel is anywhere from 50,000 to more than 100,000 words. By the time you put the last period on the final sentence, you’re going to repeat a few words. There’s nothing wrong with that.

However, do make sure you avoid reusing the same word in the same paragraph, because otherwise it can make you look like a lazy writer.

See? I used “make” twice in the same sentence. Doesn’t that feel unpolished? According to Merriam-Webster, the English vocabulary consists of around one million words. One million. With that many tools at our disposal, there’s no excuse for repetition.

Example:

Randy watched the bed late into the night. He sat on the hard folding chair and listened to the clock on the wall. Tick. Tock. Finally, sometime after 3 am, the mattress shifted. Tick. Tock. Something wiggled under the sheets. Tick. Tock. Randy leapt onto bed. The monster under the sheets shrieked. Its tentacles flailed. One clocked Randy in the temple. He fell on the hard floor. The monster threw itself out the window.

Randy hated bed bugs. Tick. Tock.

Look at all that pesky repetition. One million words, people. And yes, clock is used as a verb and as a noun, but that doesn’t matter. It’s still repetitive. Plus, Randy is the only dude in the scene, so no need to keep reusing his name. So, let’s take another pass at this, and whittle away some of this repetition.

Randy watched the bed late into the night. The folding chair dug into his ass and jabbed his spine. He listened to the clock on the wall. Tick. Tock. Finally, sometime after 3 am, the mattress shifted. Tick. Tock. Something wiggled under the sheets. Tick. Tock. He leapt onto bed. The monster beneath the covers shrieked. Its tentacles flailed. One slammed Randy in the temple. He fell on the unforgiving floor. The creature threw itself out the window.

He hated bed bugs. Tick. Tock.

Doesn’t that feel better? I cut out a lot of the repetition. Plus, rather than describe the folding chair as hard, I decided to show it as hard. Note that I left in all the Ticks and Tocks. That repetition was used intentionally, so it gets a free pass. It had a purpose, and the reader should sense that.

That repetition was used intentionally, so it gets a free pass. It had a purpose, and the reader should sense that.

This is a tip that got from Jeffrey Ford’s fiction seminar at Antioch Writers’ Workshop (AWW). If you’ve ever read Ford’s stories or novels, then you know that he’s a master of the craft. If you haven’t read his stuff, stop reading this right now, go buy one of his books, read it, and then come back.

All done? Good. He’s amazing, right?

The point here is a simple one: longer sentences slow the pace of a scene, while shorter sentences speed it up.

So we’ll start with a paragraph of long sentences:

Randy walked into a crowded bar and before he could ask the bartender for a bourbon, something slammed into the back of his head. He spilled across a flimsy table cluttered with empty bottles—yellow snowflakes flashed across his vision—and crashed to the floor.

Now slice up those sentences into quicker bits:

Randy walked into a crowded bar. He motioned for the bartender. Something slammed into the back of his head. He spilled across a flimsy table. Empty bottles rattled. Yellow snowflakes flashed across his vision. He crashed to the floor.

Or mix it up a little with some paragraph breaks:

Randy walked into a crowded bar and motioned for the bartender.

Something slammed into the back of his head. He spilled across a flimsy table. Empty bottles rattled. Yellow snowflakes flashed across his vision.

He crashed to the floor.

See how sentence and paragraph breaks really impact how you read the scene? The words stay the same, but the pacing changes subtly. So, for more introspective moments, I find that longer sentences do the trick. For more action-based scenes, I like to use short, quick sentences and lots of paragraph breaks.