Phrases you've noticed writers repeat?

[dazzlepecs]

"Threw himself down on the divan" - Oscar Wilde, any story with fashionable young men, sometimes multiple times!!

 

"Rubbed his jaw thoughtfully" - almost every Phillip K dick story!!

[Beccles]

"I saw":lol: in several novels of many authors

[lexiepiper]

Stephenie Meyer particularly likes the word 'chagrin', it appears loads in the Twilight saga

[BookBee8]

Stephenie Meyer particularly likes the word 'chagrin', it appears loads in the Twilight saga

 

And they freeze a lot too. 'Edward froze' 'The Cullens froze'

 

JK Rowling always used 'and with their pockets feeling emptier'... or something similar.

[Stephanie2008]

Stephenie Meyer repeats a lot of things. She also over uses "crooked smile" in my opinion, and "love" in the last two books.

[Scarlette]

Robin McKinley used the phrase "carthagian hell" or "carpathian hell" (I don't remember exactly and I don't have the book with me) a lot in her novel Sunshine. It amused me.

[Ben]

Another Stephenie Meyer one. She's heavy on her adverbs.

[Beccles]

Shaun Hutson uses "The younger man" in all of his books very frequently.

[Janet]

Years ago I read all the Wycliffe books (apart from one I haven't got round to) by the late W J Burley and nearly all of them had "shabby houses with threadbare carpets", or variations thereof!.

[Freewheeling Andy]

It's not really repeated phrases, but as I was mentioning on the Murakami thread, there are some authors who repeatedly use the same images and settings - both to make atmosphere and to use as cyphers. Murakami always uses food, and uses cats, to create his setting of domestic normality. Although the books clearly aren't about food or cats, the protagonist is always cooking some spaghetti, or drinking a beer.

 

Meanwhile, the other author I mentioned there, JG Ballard repeatedly used drained and empty swimming pools and crushed, broken sunglasses, to create an imagery of wealthy suburbia gone into a state of decay. Reading his memoir, you discover that this is all, really, remembered from the chaos and destruction around the expat scene in Shanghai just before and after the Japanese invasion, which so influenced his writing.

[KW]

Stephenie Meyer particularly likes the word 'chagrin', it appears loads in the Twilight saga

 

impossibly

amazingly

regrettably

an LY word, actually - she tends to overuse.

[BookJumper]

My personal favourite: J.K. Rowling, HP 7, broomstick chase scene: "swerve to avoid".

[Ben]

Another Stephenie Meyer one. She's heavy on her adverbs.

 

impossibly

amazingly

regrettably

an LY word, actually - she tends to overuse.

 

 

[Stephanie2008]

 

I've never noticed this before Ben but it's definitely true. She reuses a lot of things really.

[chrysalis_stage]

One this is a pretty obvious one if you've read it but I'll mention it anyway, in 'The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami' which is a collection of short stories and a few contain the name 'Noboru Watanabe' which is used for a missing cat, an elephant keeper and a brother-in-law in seperate stories, it's quite amusing really.

 

I don't know if he uses the name in any other book, I would think there is a possibility that the name may be in the 'wild up bird chronicle' as it was used in the short version of the story....hmm...maybe someone can fill me in on that one.

 

I did read that Noboru Watanabe is apparently one of Murakami's artist friends and he used his name as a kind of in-joke.

[Kimmy619]

In the Twilight saga "my favourite wolfy grin" and "my favourite crooked smile"

[Janet]

One this is a pretty obvious one if you've read it but I'll mention it anyway, in 'The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami' which is a collection of short stories and a few contain the name 'Noboru Watanabe' which is used for a missing cat, an elephant keeper and a brother-in-law in seperate stories, it's quite amusing really.

 

I don't know if he uses the name in any other book, I would think there is a possibility that the name may be in the 'wild up bird chronicle' as it was used in the short version of the story....hmm...maybe someone can fill me in on that one.

Yes, it's the name of the cat in TWuBC (and I think the protagonist's brother-in-law too - whom the cat was named after).

[chrysalis_stage]

Yes, it's the name of the cat in TWuBC (and I think the protagonist's brother-in-law too - whom the cat was named after).

 

I thought it would be because The elephant vanishes contains a short wild up bird chronicle story, thats brilliant, it makes me want to read it more now lol

[Raven]

The repeated use of phrase "old boy" by John Wyndham in Chocky is quite amusing.

[MuggleMagic]

there were parts in HP6 (I think eak!) where it became very repetitive when Harry was looking at the memories. The feeling of looking at the memories was described the same way about three times in a row

 

... anybody know what I am talking about?

[Mia]

Dean Koontz nearly always used the phrase "recombinant DNA" in his earlier books. He also loves describing rain - his descriptions of it can run for paragraphs, if not pages. (See The Taking.)

[Loopyloo100]

He also loves describing rain - his descriptions of it can run for paragraphs, if not pages. (See The Taking.)

 

Hmmm! Maybe that's why I disliked The Taking so much.

[Rawr]

I will demonstrate a technique which King uses a lot over and over, it gets a little

(confusing)

repetitive, but in a lot of places he uses it effectively, i just wish he'd cut it out a bit, i'm not sure if he has done in his recent novels as i have only got onto Cell.

 

He also uses a lot of phrases to good effect regularly, i can't think of any right now, but it kind of makes you feel welcome reading his work as it all seems to link together through his repeated things.

[Kreader]

In Sherilyn Kenyon's Darkhunter series she uses the phrase "against his/her will" in lusty moments.

[Mia]

Hmmm! Maybe that's why I disliked The Taking so much.

 

Perhaps! Or perhaps it was because the story was such a big stinking pile of . (Believe it or not, I do class myself as a Koontz fan, but this book was beyond terrible.)