Writers can get stuck on a word and repeat it to nausea-inducing frequency. It might be a necessary word on occasion, but the repetition can jar the reader.
Three possible solutions:
Find different words to vary them
Revise the sentences to eliminate the need for so many of them
Delete them and discover they weren’t needed at all
Looky here!
Here’s a really bad example to illustrate:
“Look,” he said, looking over her shoulder.
She turned to look at what he was looking at. She didn’t see anything, so she looked at him. “What am I supposed to be looking at, or are you just trying to scare me?” she asked with a puzzled look on her face.
There are other words that could be deployed to avoid the word ‘look’ appearing seven times.
I’ve edited a lot of manuscripts where the writer has caught this repetition. It becomes clear when this snippet reads like:
“Look,” he said, gazing over her shoulder.
She turned to gaze at what he was gazing at… and so on.
Replacing one ov…
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