This school year, I’m teaching a middle school creative writing class. Most of the assignments are single paragraphs in which the students focus on descriptive writing. Still, I’ve found that many of the “rules” for good writing that we talk about are the guidelines I try to follow in my own work. One of those guidelines is to avoid repeating words.

In the class, we talk a lot about the use of synonyms — different words that have a similar meaning. Using the words “kitten”, “feline”, or “pet” in a paragraph just makes for more interesting reading than “cat”, “cat”, “cat”. While I don’t often find myself using the same nouns over and over, I do sometimes use the same  adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, and dialogue tags.

But — I have a sure-fire way to catch them when I do. Before I call any piece of writing “complete”, I read it out loud. If one of my children is nearby, I make him or her listen, too. 🙂 By reading my work out loud, I can hear the repeated words, rather than my eyes just skimming over them. I circle them as I go, replacing them with other words — even better, more exact words —  when I’m finished.

How do you catch those repeat offenders in your writing?

Photo by DMedina