Don’t Hurt Your Writing by Repeating Your Writing

Darker PagesA 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.

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