5 Ways Repetition Hurts Your Novel

By Janice Hardy

How to spot and fix those sneaky repetitions that weaken your prose.

Aside from a great one liner, a declaration of love, or a juicy piece of gossip, most people don’t like to hear the same thing over and over. This is doubly true for readers, and repeating yourself in a novel can make your story feel redundant, stale, or even poorly edited.

When you consider a typical novel runs between 80,000 and 100,000 words, it’s no wonder words (and even ideas) get repeated. Some of those words readers don’t notice (such as said) and others stand out even if you only used them once or twice (like antidisestablishmentarianism). 

Repetition drags down your pacing and makes even strong prose feel clunky.

How to Avoid Repetitive Sentence Structure

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

“List-like prose" can occur in a variety of ways, and they all have the same result—flat writing.

Writing is more than simply writing down what happens in a scene. Good writing has a musical flow, drawing the reader into and through the paragraph and seamlessly handing them off to the next paragraph. Without that flow, you get a monotonous rhythm that puts readers to sleep:

I ran down to the lake to look for my little sister, Georgia. I found her sitting on the dock, her feet dangling in the water. I yelled for her to come home, but she didn't seem to hear me. I went over and nudged her in the arm. She screamed and fell off the dock into the water. I just laughed.

-Yawn-