100,000 words in one head.

[elfs]

Writers often divide words into two categories: scaffolding words, and functional words. Scaffolding words are all the words we use all the time: "The," "is," "said." Functional words are those that actually move the story. You wouldn't use "hurtle," "admonish," "furious," too often and too close to one another because then they become repetitious and the reader gets the impression that your vocabulary is limited.

I thought about the difference between these two kinds of words when I came across the use of the word 'congenitally' twice in Sterlings. Polly (one of Rhiane's peers) uses it first: "Rhiane was congenitally incapable of caring about her appearance herself." And Tempany (Rhiane's commanding officer) uses it later again to describe Rhiane: "She's congenitally incapable of giving less than her best."

These two incidents are separated by about 50,000 words, which makes me wonder if I should bother cutting one out. I figure that's enough time for the reader to have forgotten the first one. But it's still one of those places where a Big Functional Word appears twice in the same book, and it's a standout word, so I think twice about using it.

Comments

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

As a novelist and editor, I have some thoughts on using those types of weighty words more than once in a story:

I think using the same word twice (or even more) is fine, as long as it is the common parlance of the people in your book. If it isn't, it's better if it's used, each time, either by a first-person narrator or in the quotes attributed to only one of the characters. We all have words we like to say over & over; it's part of each person's language.

What you have here is two different characters using it -- and I don't know anything about the world you're writing, but I'm guessing (since you are questioning its repetition) that this is not a word that people in the written-world commonly use. While it's being used to describe the same person, it's being used as an adverb to modify two different descriptions, so it's not like one of these people picked it up and thought the description so apt that they're echoing it. One of the references should probably be dropped.

[And, if you don't mind, I would suggest dropping 'herself' from the end of that first one -- change it to 'her own appearance.' The 'herself' is a bit on the ungrammatical side.]

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

I agree: one use should be dropped. If it was the same speaker, it'd be fine, but as it is, it doesn't work.

However, the grammatical correction suggested is unnecessary since it's dialog. People speak (and write) ungramatically.