Author Confessions: Repetition and Redundancy 

Hmmm, isn’t the title itself a bit redundant? Why would I use both words to describe an issue most author struggle with from time to time? Let me explain.

Repetition

When a writer is penning that first draft they often use a word several times, whether it is to describe and object or action. It’s easy to do because the brain just had that word at it’s fingers and it was easier to grab that than search for a slightly different word. Another phrase for this is duplicate words or phrases.

Granted, sometimes it can be hard to find alternate words for things like, a door, for instance. You have a door, or a portal, or opening, entrance, exit, hatch, egress… There are more descrptive nouns as well that could be used but if you are writing a historical tome, a portal might come across as a tad too fantastical for the reader. Stairs and steps can pose problems as well. When I typed in either word to an online thesaurus I got nothing but a link to a definition.

An author has to almost have a fully functioning thesaurus in their head but alas, a rough draft will take forever if the author has to police every time she uses a word more than once, whether it be a noun or verb, or even a phrase. There are online software programs, which for a fee, can help you find all those words. Two of the better programs out there are AutoCrit and  Prowriting Aid. They require a subscription to utilize all their features but for a beginning author, their feedback can be valuable. I used AutoCrit for years as a new editor and I learned a lot that helped me (and the authors I worked with) hone our writing skills. I tried Grammarly for a time but often their feedback wasn’t correct so I ditched the free version I had downloaded. Not sure how good they are now. The programs are automated so the author still needs to make wise choices how much to heed with suggestions that might be made regarding a manuscript. You can edit story too much and lose your voice. Alas, I digress.

Winter Watch was written by a friend of mine, Anita Klumpers. It is a riviting romantic suspense. A physical pocketwatch is central to the story. Imagine how that program flagged the word watch! The struggle was real as we tried to find ways to not always use the word watch since the object was mentioned on practially every page! (It’s an awesome book by the way so go get a copy!)

So why two  words? Repetition and Redundancy?

Redundancy

This is a different matter where one says the same thing more than once but perhaps not using the same terminology. This often happens during the first draft because the author is spitting out as much as they can and they might have forgotten they already mentioned a concept or phrase to describe something. Sometimes it is as simple as two words put together that mean similar things. The reality is, readers are smart and don’t often need things to be told to them over again. This can be a challenge in dialogue if a character is telling her story to multiple people over chapters. That is when it is often better for the author to write, “She relayed her experience,” or something like that.

While normally we want dialogue in a story, it could become kind of like a person who tells the same story over and over to people in almost identical words and phrases. It gets exhausting to listen to if you are there for each of those tellings. Same is true in a book, whether it is a similar word from the first or a similar phrase or concept, the author needs to be willing to cut out the redundancy so the story doesn’t get bogged down. I think Charles Schultz in his Peanuts cartoon shows this better than I could.

It’s not that we can’t refer to previous events or things in a story but we need to be careful to not bore the reader with words, phrases or concepts that get recycled without moving the story forward.

Repetition and redundancy are challenges most authors need to struggle with and it can be a challenge within a full-length novel to eliminate any of that completely. Sometimes it is necessary and the author and the editor need to make sure that it serves the story to have it there on the pages. Readers have abandoned books for less and we don’t want to lose our readers.