Repetition kills stories

On Saturday, I decided to read a book that I had downloaded as a freebie.

No--I'm not mentioning the title or the author. All I will mention was that it was a paranormal romance.

Suffice it to say that it wasn't worth my time.

But it taught a great lesson--

Mindless repetition kills stories.

And, THANK GOD I have a wonderful CP (*shoutout to Meg Reid*) who will gently beat the snot out of me if I did this.

Since this was downloaded onto my Kindle, I can only give percent completed instead of page numbers.

10% The first part was good, not great, but a good start. Since I'm a writer and a reader, I could tell that it had been entered in some contests. NO, I never judged it, but it felt clean, straight forward.

Right around the 10% point, the story took on the soap opera effect. Where everything could be cleared up provided there was actual conversation between the hero and heroine.

Right about now, the author told the reader--for about the fifth time--about the hidden secrets the heroine needed to discover about her father. Hero knows the secret, but he's not talking. Heroine wants to be herself, but is in total denial about how she really is.

Usually when a writer writes a paranormal romance, she will choose one type of paranormal 'thing'. This author decided to include all of them from the heroine who sees ghosts, to the centuries old hero (angel or demon?) to vamps, to weres, to witches, to a demon/devil barred in the basement.

And I will bet you money that she included a kitchen sink in there somewhere.

Yeah, talk about overkill.

Yes--I've done this before . . . on the very first novel that I wrote, which will never see the light of day. AND when I've done it on recent stories, I like to think that I've learned to edit myself to stop it--which explains why I'm rewriting TROLL!

Add in the obligatory lust scene. Secrets mentioned again. AND then I skipped ahead to about the 25%

Same secrets, blah, blah, blah, secrets, ghosts, blah, blah, horniness, secrets, blah, blah, blah.

At this point I stopped reading and deleted the story . . . now I need to figure out how to PERMANENTLY DELETE it. Yes, it was that bad.

I know the brave new world of publishing is allowing more authors to share their stories, but we must all remember to edit ourselves and make that story the best it can possibly be--even if it means a drastic rewrite.

Please listen to your CP's, especially the ones who don't pull their punches. True writing friends/CP's aren't out to pull you down, they really do want to make the story better.

Listen to them.

Oh, and I started reading a tried and true author for me--Jayne Ann Krentz--now I need to get back to see what Fallon and Isabelle are up to!

Later, Peeps!