Apr 29, 2014 / Beginner

Rinse, Repeat: Make the Most of Repetition in Your Writing

Saying the same thing twice (or three, seven, twelve times…) can sometimes really help drive your point home.

As writers, we’re conditioned early on to shun redundancy at all costs. That’s a good thing: few qualities are more precious for a writer than economy (and I’m saying this as an often notoriously verbose writer; just look at these parentheses!).

Used sparingly and in the right context, though, repetition is a literary device that can make quite the rhetorical effect. Here are a few ideas on how to use it in your own posts.

Play it again (and again, and again) Sam

Repetition, at its most basic level, can involve the planned overuse of a single word. Think Molly Bloom’s famous final soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses, where the character repeats the word “yes” more than 140 times.

One powerful way of using repetition is actually to break the mold at some choice point in your post. Repetition is a great setup for surprises and reversals.

Of course, you don’t have to go quite as far as Joyce: picking a word or a phrase and building your post around a few instances where you use it can still evoke an emotional reaction in your readers. In a moving post on addiction, written in the wake of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death, writer John Strasser opened the piece with a crushing riff on the word “fine:”

Everything is fine and our family is fine and we are fine and that is a lie.

Another natural way to go down this route is to write about a word that means something to you, whether it’s a particularly sonorous word you’ve just learned or a terrible slur you want to deconstruct and condemn.

All for anaphoras

A more structured way to use repetition is anaphora, the literary term for starting each sentence with the same phrase (its opposite is epistrophe, where the same phrase appears at the end of each sentence — like in this popular post about freshman year in college, where each sentence ends with “it’s okay”).

Anaphoras create not only emphasis, but also a certain rhythm: they make a strong impression on your readers’ ears (and memories). Which is why one powerful way of using them is actually to break the mold at some choice point in your post.

In other words, if you repeat “I want to leave today” at the beginning of each sentence, you could really jolt your audience — in the best way possible — by inserting an “I’m never going to leave” right at the end. Repetition, in other words, is a great setup for surprises and reversals.

Modifying a pattern

Sometimes, simply repeating the same statement several times in the course of a piece can make for a poignant (or funny, or heartbreaking) effect. The idea is to use a phrase as an anchor, an element that ties together the post’s disparate parts into a cohesive, satisfying whole.

The idea is to keep the rhetorical device in the foreground, but also to prevent too much monotony.

In a post that’s been widely circulated this month, the blogger behind Epiphany in the Cacophony wrote a thought-provoking reflection on sexual assault in India, titled My Son Would Never Rape a Woman. She uses that title throughout the post, with a slightly modified version closing each section. The cumulative effect is truly memorable.

What we can all try when using repetition is to introduce small tweaks to whatever it is we’re repeating — the idea is to keep the rhetorical device in the foreground, but also to prevent too much monotony.

Like most writerly tricks, repetition, too, is all about balance and context. How have you used it in your posts? Do you have any tips to share?

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  2. In regards to basic repetition another good example of this for me would be Obama’s “yes we can” speech. I’m not even American, but for me that was a speech that was really well written and the repetition enhanced the statement.

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  3. I used the phrase “on a school day” repeatedly in my post of that name to stress the joy of doing simple things on a day when school was closed because of snow. The repetition led me to feel safe and opened up some deep emotions! Beware of rhythm and repetition- it is a powerful tool in poetry!

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  10. Hi, Thanks for posting this. I am very new blogger and haven’t thought of anything like this. i just write and feel and think and write and feel and think…and sense and sense and so on… I am either inspired or thoughtful about something or someone and the use of repeated words just comes out — “naturally” (for lack of a better word). The passion that dictates its application (when, where and how, how much and why and why not) is inundating my supposedly control over my pen. lol.. I sound like I am heavily drugged. lol. lol..(migraine pills…hmmmm). But seriously speaking, this is helpful… I still dont know what the gods and godesses of writing style has to say about my posts.. but anyhow, i just write and i love it.

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  11. This is a great device that preachers and rappers often use. You have to think poetically and rhythmically or it can look like bad writing. The famous Paschal sermon by John Chrysostom uses this – he delivered it in the 4th century and it is read every Easter in Eastern Orthodox Sermons. He does this twice to turn the phrases around.

    “Hell, said he, was embittered, when it encountered Thee in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains. It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.”

    So to Baptists, call and response preaching happened a long time ago 😉

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  13. Such a great point. i tend to use this technique in my poems. It’s actually how i title the poem. i’ll get inspired and start writing and i tend to gravitate towards a repetitive phrase that will come out in stream of consciousness . then i title the poem with it and work back wards. i didn’t even realize i do that until just now!

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  19. Repetition has always been my favorite writing tool. For me, it helps get my point across. The reader focuses more on what the words mean, if there is less to process. It also can be fun! Sometimes I think I overuse repetition, and as you said in your post, it needs to be used carefully. But what can I say?! I love it, I love it, I love it. (I need some practice, obviously)

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  21. I must say (not very writer-ly of me), I’ve never given much thought to repetition. However, I am in the midst of editing a memoir I’ve written (and hope to self publish – anybody with helpful info?) and after reading this daily post, I realized I’d repeated a phrase my dad used to say throughout the manuscript. Thank you for raising my consciousness about this process. It’s fitting too, because my book is (somewhat, but through a story) about remaining conscious through life’s twists and turns.

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