One thing I noticed that seems to be a recurrent complaint about some fic authors is their tendency to be repetitive in their descriptive narrative.

I'm wondering if anyone has ever noticed the similarity to Harry Turtledove's writing style, and by this I mean his tendency to repeatedly latch onto certain things in the course of his novel and repeatedly hammer on it over and over.

Here's an example:

In his novel, Days of Infamy, and its sequel, End of the Beginning, one thing that he repeats virtually word for word, at several points, is the fact that a fighter pilot landing on an aircraft carrier must obey the signals given by the officer on deck with the landing flags (or pylons, or whatever you call 'em - I can't be arsed to grab the book out of a pile of other books at the moment ).

Another example:

In his book, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, he has interminable bridge games, as well as the Jewish characters, thinking, almost verbatim, how much they have to hide away. It's a legitimate fear, but the way he writes it, it's clearly more a tendency to write repetitively for the sake of hammering at it.

Well, sure enough, if you take things like the Sacrifices Arc the same complaints came up. So I'm wondering, how prevalent is this in the HP fandom, do you think?

Also, how much does it detract from enjoying a fic for you? For me, Turtledove-like styles are just a tad annoying, but they don't turn me right off a fic.

 

Well, generally the author will be 'repetitive' as a means of reminding people of relatively unimportant things. They'll almost always, for example, re-describe characters from book to book, even if nothing abotu them has changed. The author pretty much has to write as if it's been awhile since the reader has read the last book, and this is just another way of reconnecting larger plot devices with insignificant 'checkpoints' from book to book.

 

I’m instantly reminded of those shitty Indy!Harry stories there Harry go on ranting about how he isn’t going to let “old coot” manipulate him anymore in every paragraph, or Azkaban!Harry angsting and thinking how everybody betrayed him at every opportunity. I think author trying to make a point by repeating, but for me it usually has opposite effect. Those word simply losing an emotional value and became something I skipping so not to get bored. It’s annoying. Of course if not some kind of joke (animagus/animagi in Jbern’s story) or as DarkSov said description of something long forgotten, but even in this case repeating word to word is ridiculous.