Repetitive Actions in a First Draft

[Philip Overby]

Hmmm...I could be in a lot of trouble here. My characters are constantly looking, pointing, nodding, and gesturing.

On the other hand, I recently took a look at 'Shovel Ready' a dystopian near future book set in post apocalyptic NYC. Very abbreviated style. I doubt if there were more than two dozen sentences in the whole dang book more than ten words long. Very few descriptions of people, places or things more than four or five words, and usually less.

Apart from periods and commas, almost nothing in the way of punctuation, either - not even quotation marks. Got to the point where I couldn't tell if the MC was speaking or thinking or if somebody else was speaking. Almost nothing in the way of speech tags, either. Just lots and lots of short sentences written in a style about one notch up from basic English - literally.

As goes with most things, it's about execution I presume. Certain actions may really bother other people. I'm of the opinion that repetitive actions don't bother me so much as a reader, but they do bother me as a writer because I don't like to use the same phrases or words too much. That is to say if I'm reading a book which has a good story, I don't so much mind these kind of things myself. Others may view them differently.