29. Don’t overuse anything.

rulesforwriting:

“But, no.” - Last Sacrifice, Richelle Mead

This book was around 550 pages long. She used “but, no” at least 100 times. That’s once every five pages or so. That’s too many times. There are a crapload of different words and phrases to use instead of this single-sentence thing. There’s “instead”, “rather”, “, but”, “I was wrong.”, “That didn’t happen.”, and so many more. Other things that head under this type of repetition: oh my, oh my god, holy shit, etc. It’s one thing for there to be a catch phrase. It’s another to be annoying.

Here’s another type of repetition.

“My inner goddess is doing back flips in a routine worthy of a Russian Olympic gymnast.” - Fifty Shades of Grey, EL James

I am 48% of the way into this book. The inner goddess has been used to exemplify the MC’s emotion’s 10-15 times. Sometimes it’s hard to interpret. In fact, it’s not clear why this whole “inner goddess” thing came up; is James trying to poke fun at some imaginary yoga instructor telling women to release their inner goddess? Is the inner goddess meant to be Anastasia (the MC) at her core or even Anastasia’s potential personified? Or is this just a bad narrating ploy because the author has no idea how else to explain how Anastasia feels?

It’s overdone. I am sick and tired of reading about this lady’s “inner goddess”.