Avoiding Excess Repetition in Your Writing

by Doug Lewars

“We can’t have far to go,” he said.

“It might be farther then you think,” she said. “After all, we did have to detour.”

“True, but we’ve come a long way, detour or no detour,” he said, “And I’m pretty certain that it’s just beyond the next hill.”

“Well,” she said with a shrug, “There’s only one way to find out.”

Four sentences of dialogue that might appear in a story. Four sentences and every one of them contains the verb ‘said’. Yuck.