Very often I find myself repeating the same thing, just in different words. You annoy your readers when you insult their ability to intuit.
If I tell you, “My eyes teared up as I closed the door.” My next sentence should not be, 'What I’d seen had made me sad.' In storytelling, I believe you should either imply a thing, or outright say it… not both.
it slows the pacing in two different ways, since those with intuition would understand the eyes tearing up and people who have trouble connecting dots would need it explained that the person was sad. Here’s the thing though, readers are generally, intuitive people.
Even the least of them can do detective work to figure out the implication of a vague statement. The people who would have trouble intuiting, would likely also have trouble remembering where the closest bookstore is. I'm not worried about offending those people, because if you made it this far you're obviously a reader.
Repetition also can lose you an agent. That 30 seconds you need to hook your reader or agent, is going to be turned into 60 seconds because of repetition. That’s real bad when you’re sending it to someone who reads between 100 and 200 proposals a week. I hope you enjoyed the blog and got something out of it. If you like what you read, do me a favor and subscribe. You can also check me out on twitter @advice_writing #novels #novel #writing #writingtips #writingadvice #writingcommunity #writerscommunity #book #repetition #pacing
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