How to Avoid Repetitive Words and Phrases in Fiction Writing

A common problem in fiction writing is the overuse of certain words or phrases. It might be a favorite phrase, or a word with few synonyms, or indicate an accident during editing. Whatever the reason, when a reader keeps stumbling over the same lines repeatedly, they may become bored or irritated and give up on your story. Here are ways to avoid repetitive words and phrases in your fiction writing and keep your audience interested.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Word processing program
• Thesaurus

1. Read your work aloud. It's easier to skim over repeats on the screen, but when you vocalize every word on the page, you may hear the repetitions.

2. Use the "Find" feature in your word processing program (Ctrl + F in Microsoft Word). If words like "beautiful" or "opaque" turn up more than once in a three-page story, start looking for synonyms.

3. Use the computer thesaurus. Most word processing programs have a built- in thesaurus (Shift + F7 in Word). This tool can provide alternatives to repeated words. It can be a great help in editing, or when you're stumped for a descriptive phrase.

4. Use a hard copy thesaurus, the larger the better. A computer thesaurus is quick, but the hard copy version contains more choices, including slang phrases. It also groups similar types of adjectives together, so if you're not finding what you want for that one particular word, you can browse and find a different way to arrive at the same meaning.

5. Eliminate adjectives. Rather than trying to replace some of your repetitive adjectives, get rid of them altogether. We don't need to know from paragraph to paragraph that the heroine's eyes are "misty grey," "bright blue" or "darkly suspicious." Let the dialogue do some of the work for you, or the other character's reactions, or switch to a description of body language. Sometimes it's okay for your heroine's eyes to just be blue. Or just eyes. Don't overload your reader with descriptors they don't need.

6. Limit adverbs. Weed out empty intensifiers, such as "really" and "very," that don't mean anything. Instead of writing that a character is "very tired," describe him as "exhausted."

7. Read your edited manuscript aloud again. Much of the editing requires focusing on pieces of the writing rather than the whole. If you've removed a large chunk of text, some adjectives that were perfectly spaced apart before now end up on top of one another.

Resources

• Buy a thesaurus at Amazon
• Use Merriam-Webster's online thesaurus

[Delaplane]

on 3/13/2009 Great advice that I learned the hard way. Wish I'd read your article before finishing my books.