dazzlepecs Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 "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!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beccles Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 "I saw":lol: in several novels of many authors Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lexiepiper Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 Stephenie Meyer particularly likes the word 'chagrin', it appears loads in the Twilight saga Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BookBee8 Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephanie2008 Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 Stephenie Meyer repeats a lot of things. She also over uses "crooked smile" in my opinion, and "love" in the last two books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarlette Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 Another Stephenie Meyer one. She's heavy on her adverbs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beccles Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 Shaun Hutson uses "The younger man" in all of his books very frequently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Janet Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 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!. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freewheeling Andy Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KW Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BookJumper Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 My personal favourite: J.K. Rowling, HP 7, broomstick chase scene: "swerve to avoid". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 Another Stephenie Meyer one. She's heavy on her adverbs. impossiblyamazingly regrettably an LY word, actually - she tends to overuse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephanie2008 Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 I've never noticed this before Ben but it's definitely true. She reuses a lot of things really. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrysalis_stage Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kimmy619 Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 In the Twilight saga "my favourite wolfy grin" and "my favourite crooked smile" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Janet Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 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). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrysalis_stage Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raven Posted July 17, 2009 Share Posted July 17, 2009 The repeated use of phrase "old boy" by John Wyndham in Chocky is quite amusing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MuggleMagic Posted July 17, 2009 Share Posted July 17, 2009 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? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mia Posted July 18, 2009 Share Posted July 18, 2009 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.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loopyloo100 Posted July 18, 2009 Share Posted July 18, 2009 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rawr Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kreader Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 In Sherilyn Kenyon's Darkhunter series she uses the phrase "against his/her will" in lusty moments. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mia Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 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.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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