Repetition / Returning / Revisiting

When to set aside the red pen

photo by Greg Jeanneau 🗾 on Unsplash

Many years ago, sitting in a writing workshop, I heard fellow students point out repeated words in manuscripts. Around the table, I could spot the red circles on the papers in their hands. I dreaded my turn!

Repeating words = tired, first-draft stuff, I thought. Quite possibly. That was what caused us to lean on a handful of English words. Momentary laziness. Or slips of mind and carelessness.

Then I read the amazing book, Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, surely the god of children’s publishing through the decades of the 1940s right through and into the 1970s. Her editorial intuition discovered Maurice Sendak (in her letters to him, she addressed him as “Dear Genius”), and Louise Fitzhugh (Harriet the Spy). She edited “Charlotte’s Web.” Really, she edited all the classics that are still with us and still in print! I’m digressing from the topic of the use of repetition… but do read this book at some point: it’s an amazing tome of what the editorial relationship can be, and should be. And you will learn much about writing, and growing. For times when you feel writing has become less-than-art, read it.

In that book, Nordstrom spoke of the writers with whom she used the lightest editing touch, and she spoke of how when the pages from Laura Ingalls Wilder (edited by her daughter Rose Wilder Lane) arrived on her—Nordstrom’s—desk, she would turn them over with care one by one, reading, and then would prepare to leave them on the printer’s desk. After reading, she left them untouched.

That story and image stayed with me. Fast forward another couple of years, and I’d completed my MFA, with those words about repetition, and images of red circles and other pennings solidly in my mind, and I was reading Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter, to my young son.

In the middle of a page was a blocky paragraph, probably two thirds of the page, and in it was the word “snow,” no less than eight—EIGHT—times.

Read aloud

The experience of reading aloud does draw to your attention to much that might be missed when reading to the self and silently—often with eyes skimming.

But that paragraph I had to re-read. (With son staring balefully!) and it wasn’t because I wanted to reach for my red pen.

As I was reading I could hear Nordstrom’s words. I could hear classmates’ words. But here’s the thing: the repetition of the word worked. Such a simple word, four letters, one syllable, worked through a paragraph evoking the most terrifying season in a young life.

I wondered how I would have read it if I hadn’t read Nordstrom’s words. (What does it take to open a mind.) But altogether the experience caused me to rethink repetition.

There are times it works… like nothing else

If you write for very young children, repetition is desirable; it’s called patterning. You might write a refrain. Or use a particular set of single words to create rhythm in the work, and to attune a young ear to a sound or idea.

And in poetry, it can be similar. You might use repetition of a word to work with the ideas of growth, or to illustrate change. Certainly, in poetry, you are working through repetitions of sound—assonance and consonance and more—to achieve rhythm. All writers have much to learn from poetry, even if you do not consider yourself to be a poet. This type of building serves all writing.

Words can be touchstones in a work. I posted about Freytag’s pyramid this past week, but story-shape can be thought of as a spiral, too—going over the same ground even as it is rising. Repeated words, ideas revisited, can take or create this shape. (Sometimes it’s so useful to think of stories as a “shape.”)

Elsewhere I’ve talked about using the poetic form of the sestina—a collection of a half dozen words—and using it to create a piece of prose. This would work for nonfiction, too, with each mention moving forward to develop the thesis.

In whatever genre or form you are writing, consider: how is each use of the word advancing/growing/shifting the whole?

Back in the fall, I spoke of the novel I was reading (and captivated by), The Rain Heron. I’ll share a couple of outstanding incidences of repetition. (Do read it, both for story, and for the writing.)

Repetition of -ing form: and alliteration:

Most of her time was spent sitting outside the cave, watching the wind play with the tops of the pines, waiting for cones to fall to the ground. Counting the crashing cones, watching for changes in the wind, listening for intrusions in the soundscape… (33)

The echoing “ings” form a rhythm, and movement.

Repetition of a short phrase:

Eventually he dragged his eyes from the painting and ordered a beer, which he sipped over the course of the evening, letting the golden tide lap at his lip as the boats came into the dock, as the pub filled with patrons, as the seabirds called through the windows, as the sun dropped and disappeared. (91)

I love how this simple phrase works to bring into focus the character’s world for the reader, layer by layer… like noticing the lighter shadings of ranges of mountains in the distance—beautiful!

Being aware

When you read or write repeating words, note them. Yes, there are first draft not-quite-awake-and-reaching-for-the-first-word-that-comes-to-mind repeats. But there is the thoughtful use of repetition, and the developing of that in our work.

Beyond words and sounds, there are scenes and themes that have elements of repetition, revisiting, return, recursiveness… In Chuck Palahniuk’s book on writing, he speaks about his thoughts to reiterate ideas and themes of the story throughout. I tend to think of more subtle approaching, but his words make me a bit braver about repeating myself thematically. How far can this go? When is it too much, and when not enough? In novel writing, I tend to “put it all in,” even marking or using coloured font for some sections, then revisiting on later drafts. Often, not until much later drafts do I see the answers to these questions of how far, and what to cut.

In my current WIP, now beginning final draft (I hope) a child picks rocks from a lakeshore, then is devastated when he finds them later, dried and colourless compared to when he found them. The significance of this scene is then cut by a subsequent gathering of wild flowers hidden in deep prairie grasses… or is it? Is it undercut or underlined? The flower gathering moment is just that—a brief moment, a half-echo of the rock-finding moment. I think it underlines and builds.

Then again, in first draft I had a scene in which my main character goes to a marshy, riverside park, and in mid-winter on a quiet morning, an owl flies overhead, close. He can feel its swish, a blessing of sorts. It was a scene I loved to write, one where I felt “there.” (Ah, why we write!)

Later, most recent draft, I wrestled with a scene with same character and crows. Again, a scene of resonance, and emotional shift. Real shift for the character. This scene was one of a kind. It needed to stand out; leaving in the owl scene would take away from that. It did not require an echo, or a Palahniuk reiteration. To do so would weaken the story as a whole. So I cut the owl scene. (Ouch.)

It’s impossible to make these decisions until the end or close to the end. Or even after the “end,” with beta-readers, or an agent or editor’s thoughts.

Be aware of writing scenes with similar elements. Don’t cut yet! But note.

Learning

As a young and learning writer, I tended to have scenes that included an element of fire. I did! And was not aware of it for some time. I suspect we have certain types of scenes and ways to develop story that are deep within us—for whatever reasons. I’m currently in the throes of reformatting a couple of OOP (out of print) teen novels for my first adventures in e-publishing… and I’m seeing some parallels with more recent teen novels I have written; it’s a strange feeling to look back over decades of writing, beginning and recents, in this way.

Write enough, keep an open mind, and you’ll come to recognize. Ask those who read your work to let you know what they see.

But know that seeing such is only the beginning. Set the red pen aside. Withhold judgement. The repetition may have been unconscious, but your use of it can be conscious. It can build and evoke.

It can be purposeful. Ultimately, it should be. Give it the time it needs, and the deliberation.

Post thoughts about this, or your questions about some bit of repetition that you are struggling with… (Post the bit of repetition, if you want feedback.)