If at any point you want another voice on the decluttering/throw it out! concept, I like Don Aslett's books, especially Not For Packrats Only. It's uncharacteristic of me to like something slogan-filled and cartoon-filled, but for some reason they work for me--possibly because decluttering is more an emotional than a cognitive task. IMO, it primarily requires an energy and ruthlessness driver, rather than a lot of thought and strategy.
I'm a slow reader. When I read fiction, I read it to myself at about the same speed I'd read it out loud to someone else. It takes me 2+ minutes to read a page of a novel. I'm also very ADD, and I become extremely frustrated when the fiction I'm reading draws something out "too long" or repeats itself "too much," which for me isn't much at all, because I don't miss anything most of the time. When I write, I tend to write for someone who reads the way I do. I do tend to underwrite, but even when I'm not, I tend to say things once. If someone were to skim something I wrote, it would be easy for them to miss things that are plainly there. It seems like there are a lot of people who have the opposite experience--people who ordinarily read about a page a minute or faster, who don't mind repetition of ideas and love lots of detail. I imagine there are fast readers who don't miss anything and want fast writing, and slow readers that savor every word and don't get bored. Do you think the way you read affects the way you write?
Sorry to do this to you again, but could you clarify what you mean by "repetition of ideas"? For instance, would you consider 1984's continual emphasis of the dangers of totalitarianism to be idea repetition?
My first thought was that it refers to repetition of facts that might slip the reader's mind. For example, Arya is Cat of the Canals; will the reader forget that Arya and Cat are the same person? In the big fight, Wilbur is fighting with a garden shovel--is it enough to say, "Wilbur swung..." and trust that the reader will remember what he's swinging, or do we need "Wilbur swung the sharpened shovel..." Of course, I'm just guessing. What I describe above is something I've been thinking about lately--I tend to assume that just one mention of a fact is enough.
@ChickenFreak So basically the repetition of story details? I understand that concern. I think in most cases I agree that a single detail mention will suffice. But in some instances, specifically ones in which I feel the detail has great impact on a character or a narrative theme, I'll often reassert it throughout the story. For example, if my main character has cybernetic eyes I might repeatedly describe their influence on his perception, because how he or she deciphers their world is significant imo.
Yeah, I feel like there are two kinds of repetition that I'm thinking about. One is the setup/reminder/payoff where the writer mentions the gun, reminds about the gun, then use the gun at some point. If I were to guess how long I want between reminders, maybe 30-40k words? Some people will hit the reminder every other chapter. The other kind is where the writer brings up something at the start of a paragraph, then summarizes the paragraph at the end, then mentions it again the next time a character looks at it. It's hard for me to think of good examples, because it exists in good writing, but it isn't my thing.
The strangest stories are the ones where there is no set up or reminder--just a dues ex machina that actually makes sense if you think about it. I've always like that kind of bit, where a main character pulls something out, or is rescued by something, completely out of the blue but you as the watcher are so glad it happened, it doesn't bother you. The best example I can think of is the wizard duel at the end of the 1977 movie "Wizards." This bit was completely unexplained and happened without any set up at all, but I always loved it: Sometimes less is more. I wish I knew the secret to satisfying / surprising without setup or reminder. The video above is a deconstruction of the trope, so I guess it's drawing on our shared expectations, but still.
I think you can give power to a word, name, or concept by continually using it at the right times. You see this done in politics constantly. I think there's a difference between repetition (reinforcement) of words and overwriting. You could describe Bob once, over the course of a few pages, or you could describe Bob very briefly but continually throughout the novel, to a total length of less than a few pages. This is a style thing.
So long as it makes sense I agree. I'm reminded of the climax of the movie Quigly Down Under. In that western the protagonist is only shown to be skilled with rifles, and never a pistol. Early in the film Quigly even states he's "never had much use for them," meaning revolvers. That fact that we are not shown his gunslinging ability makes the ending that much sweeter.
For me, these are two different pair of shoes (or three, if I factor in 'repetition' as used by @123456789 ). The first is based on the assumption that fast readers can't savour. I am not that fast a reader, but I believe there are people out there who are. The second is the assumption that reading speed doesn't vary with the type of text you read. I am reading in two different speeds: Fiction, more or less fast reader, non-fiction very slow reader (about one page for every five I would read in fiction). Three: How I use words to reinforce concepts in writing is not correlated with the way I read. So no. My reading speed doesn't affect the way I write.
