[_aunn]

prowritingaid has a very good, free, web-based tool that will parse out all sorts of neat things in your work. for example: i write fiction and have a real problem with “echos” — words that i repeat within a certain distance of each other — and i even miss them when proofing/editing. pwa is a godsend for this. if scrivener would add their own native version of this (hint hint incase any of you L&L people lurk here.. and it would take ten lines of java that i’d give to you for free) i would be completely covered for a word processor.

on the other side, the desktop version is expensive and needs some ui work badly. they say it’s ai-based, but it feels more like a reason to drm the product than anything. still, the free version is excellent for my limited use scope, so i hope you’d have some luck with it too

the other thing to try and do is find someone that you would use as a language buddy. there’s a subreddit (i forgot the name) where people look to pair with others who are looking for/offering certain language combos, then you get on imessage/whatsapp/whatever and use each other as a language bot. right now i’m looking for someone who speaks mandarin or cantonese and needs someone who speaks english, so if that’s you op, hit me up

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Well, repetition is considered harmful in literary writing but that, too, is just a convention. There's no reason to force yourself not to do it if you find that it comes to you naturally. Rather, I'd try to find a way to develop it further into a unique style instead. Think of minimal music, heavy metal riffs and chorus...es (chori?), or repeating leitmotifs in classical music. Repetition drives a point home. It's a useful device, in music and visual art, why not in writing also?

Actually, I find that constant repetition of the same words is absolutely necessary in technical writing. I used to do this thing where I'd try to write my research papers as if I was writing literature, trying to find new ways to say the same thing to avoid repetition, and I got some really harsh criticism as a result. I went to my university's center for academic English and they pointed out my mistake to me and suddendly it was blindingly obvious. In a technical paper you have to use the same exact words to refer to the same concept, or you will immediately confuse the reader, who will think you mean two (or more!) different things, one for each different turn of phrase. So I adjusted my writing to exploit the rythm created by the repetition of the same few words every few sentences, because of course I want to convey a precise meaning but I also want my papers to read well. And now reviewers note my papers are well written and clear; and so far nobody has complained about repetition.

[_aunn]

i’m with you on the technical bit. in any style of writing where the goal is to concisely convey information, you’re definitely right that style doesn’t matter in most cases, so repeating words isn’t really something to avoid. to kinda piggyback off your anecdote, a lot of people trip into that pitfall of trying to make whatever they’re writing sound too unique, and in doing so, they (often inadvertently) add a layer of verbosity that adds wordiness instead of anything meaningful to what they’re trying to say.

my issue is that i reuse adverbs and adjectives within a few sentences of one anther and simply don’t notice it — like saying “rain fell in gentle waves,” then a sentence or two later, “the tide rolled in, soft, gentle, crashing against…” it just feels.. lazy, unimaginative to me. i read somewhere that it’s a quirk of the brain (perhaps only for some people, i don’t remember) where words in immediate memory get looped and “stuck” there. that seems to be what happens when i write, and it chaps my ass.