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Phrases you've noticed writers repeat?


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I don't think I can actually say that Charlaine Harris repeats the next phrase, but she's used it twice and I've never heard the expression before. She uses "in a New York minute" when something is done real quick.

 

:D I don't know why, but this made me laugh, Frankie! I don't use this expression a lot, but I've heard it tons, and there's even a song with the same title by the band The Eagles. :smile2:

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:motz: I don't know why, but this made me laugh, Frankie! I don't use this expression a lot, but I've heard it tons, and there's even a song with the same title by the band The Eagles. :D

 

Haa :motz: So it's not Harris's own invention :lol: And just by chance, I heard the expression on the episode of Sex and the City I was watching last night, it was so funny to actually hear someone using the expression :D

 

Another one of Charlaine Harris's sassy jargon: someone learning/remembering/enjoying/studying someone's topography (aka touchyfeely in bed). The first time I read a line where she used that expression I thought that was really brilliantly put, but by the third time I noticed the same expression I was pulling out my hair!! :friends0:

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Another one of Charlaine Harris's sassy jargon: someone learning/remembering/enjoying/studying someone's topography (aka touchyfeely in bed). The first time I read a line where she used that expression I thought that was really brilliantly put, but by the third time I noticed the same expression I was pulling out my hair!! :friends0:

 

I totally agree with that Frankie. She uses that so many times with different characters. It really annoys me by the last book :D

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  • 11 months later...

Not strictly a repeated phrase, but Laurell K. Hamilton is constantly describing in detail what clothes the characters are wearing. I reckon if she took that out, the books would be about 20% thinner :irked:

 

 

Surely she spends most of the time describing them taking their clothes off :D

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Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte using the word 'ejaculated' for when someone spoke

 

 

 

My god I hate it when someones use that word for when people speak... it feels.... wrong!!! He said she said should be enough.

 

 

Robert Jordan.... all his female characters seem to be crossing their hands under their breasts. Once a page. :|

 

And I... My characters tend to raise their eyebrows in surprise a lot. :)) I can't stop myself.

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Shirley Jackson does seem to use the sentence 'I was chilled' a lot. I think it's intentional, but still... please. no. repetition bad.

 

That is in the voice of Merricat though, the unreliable narrator, so I don't think it is deliberate or lazy repetition on Jackson's part. I think it is effective, it's like Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye when he keeps saying 'I was ____ like a madman' it all depends on your preferences I guess!

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I don't think I can actually say that Charlaine Harris repeats the next phrase, but she's used it twice and I've never heard the expression before. She uses "in a New York minute" when something is done real quick.

Isn't that meant to be the time between a traffic light in New York going green and the driver behind you hitting their horn?

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