I get a lot of compliments on my writing (the style, the flow, and the ease of reading it), so I thought I would share a few tips on what I do to achieve that.

.•♦ Repetitive Word Usage In Sentences ♦•.

Be careful of repetitive word usage in the same sentence, or sentences in close proximity to each other. This can mess up the flow of reading, and feel repetitive to the reader. (see what I did there ^_− lol)

Here is an example of it happening in the same sentence:

Chanyeol finally texts that he's on his way, and Baekhyun at least allows himself to brush his teeth and comb his fingers through his hair a few times—taming a few unruly locks—before the other arrives.

See what I mean about feeling repetitive? It also causes your brain to have that “Wait, what?” reaction, making you want to go back and reread the sentence to be sure of what it said, which breaks the flow.

This is very easily fixed by simply switching one of them to a different word that has the same or similar meaning. Example:

Chanyeol finally texts that he's on his way, and Baekhyun at least allows himself to brush his teeth and comb his fingers through his hair a couple of times—taming a few unruly locks—before the other arrives.  

By switching the first “few” to “couple” and adding “of”, it removes the repetitiveness, and creates an even flow that won't trip up the mind. Easy enough, right? (most free dictionary apps have a thesaurus function that is very useful to help with this problem. If you don't have an app for this, you can simply put the word you want changed + “synonym” into any search engine.)

Here is an example of it happening in consecutive sentences:

Kai walked down the street, looking this way and that, wondering where his puppy had disappeared too. After an hour of searching with no luck, he wondered if he would ever find his lost pet.

In this case, they are different tenses (ing and ed) but are the same root word, “wonder”, and still count as repetitive word usage. The fix is the same as for a single sentence. Simply choose one of the words and change it. Example:

Kai walked down the street, looking this way and that, wondering where his puppy had disappeared too. After an hour of searching with no luck, he contemplated if he would ever find his lost pet.

In this case, I changed the second “wonder” to “contemplate” (note that I kept the tense (ed) the same as in the word I was replacing).

Sometimes using repetitive words simply can't be avoided. There either isn't a suitable replacement, or changing the word would change the meaning of the sentence. In those cases, I would tell you to trust your own judgment. You can either leave it with the repeat, or find a way to rewrite the whole sentence.

I hope you find this helpful ٩(๑❛ᴗ❛๑)۶ and happy writing!!!!

Miso ❤

(If you disagree with anything I've said and would like to share your opinion about it with me, that's great! I'd love to hear it… but please don't be rude, snarky, or sarcastic. Doing so will immediately make me defensive, and I can be just as equally mean as I am usually nice when provoked ୧( “̮ )୨✧ lol)