For me, the forced repetition made the stasis more obvious. If the river is still just flowing, you can see the lack of change more easily because it's the same words repeated. In a long work, we use different words and turns of phrase that disguise the fact that nothing has really changed. Three people sitting in a room discussing their…
For me, the forced repetition made the stasis more obvious. If the river is still just flowing, you can see the lack of change more easily because it's the same words repeated. In a long work, we use different words and turns of phrase that disguise the fact that nothing has really changed. Three people sitting in a room discussing their failed marriages, and then, ten pages later, they sit in a different room and have a different conversation about their failed marriages. It looks different - they're in a restaurant now and not the lounge room, and the use different words to describe their failed marriages and focus on different particulars of said failures - but essentially at its heart it's the same conversation in the same setting (which would be more painfully obvious if you had to use a more limited set of words). When the stasis is obvious (from a limited word set or a word count), the need to inject change is more pressing. And since escalation is a more interesting form of change than de-escalation, it's easier to lean into the rising action...
For me, the forced repetition made the stasis more obvious. If the river is still just flowing, you can see the lack of change more easily because it's the same words repeated. In a long work, we use different words and turns of phrase that disguise the fact that nothing has really changed. Three people sitting in a room discussing their failed marriages, and then, ten pages later, they sit in a different room and have a different conversation about their failed marriages. It looks different - they're in a restaurant now and not the lounge room, and the use different words to describe their failed marriages and focus on different particulars of said failures - but essentially at its heart it's the same conversation in the same setting (which would be more painfully obvious if you had to use a more limited set of words). When the stasis is obvious (from a limited word set or a word count), the need to inject change is more pressing. And since escalation is a more interesting form of change than de-escalation, it's easier to lean into the rising action...
Beautifully put!