What words do you repeat? Are you doing it for effect, or by default?

The robot's words I still remember from a show I watched maybe three times when I was a little kid: "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!"
Photo: A full-size replica of the B-9, Class M-3 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot, who was featured in the television series Lost in Space, at the Robot Hall of Fame in Carnegie Science Center, Pittsburgh, PA. From Wikimedia, Public Domain

Repetition can be powerful. Humans, including readers, are wired to look for patterns.

But if not done intentionally, too much or unintentional repetition can also hold your writing back from being the best it can be.

I was thinking about this when reading "30+ Ways to Avoid Repetition of 'I' in First-Person Writing" by Kathy Steinemann. As Kathy put it, 

"Prose or poetry with an overabundance of the same words or structures will seem off. Readers might not be able to tell you what’s wrong, but they know they’re unsettled by something.”

Do you have three (or more) paragraphs in a row that start with the same character's name? 

--> Best tool for figuring this one out for me? I print out my manuscript and sit somewhere different then where I normally write. The trick when reviewing is to not get stuck in the sentences and also to not get swept away by the plot. 

Does your paragraph have the exact same sentence structure for all the sentences? 

--> I catch this by reading the manuscript out loud. Sometimes I record myself reading it, and then play it back, reading along with my voice. I catch a ton of things to smooth out this way.

Are you defaulting to characters smiling or nodding too much? This last one is something I'm always on the lookout for in my own manuscripts, and I do a pass when I revise, searching for every use of "smil" (to get all the variations of smile/smiled/smiling) and "nod" (to get all the variations of nodding.) Sometimes I ration these, only allowing certain characters the actions that are my regular go-tos.

--> Working in word on a mac, command-F opens up the "find" window. The three dots next to that let you open "List Matches in Sidebar" and that's the tool I use the most for this. It tells you how many times you've used a word, and lets you jump from one to the next. 

I hope these thoughts and techniques are helpful!

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee