Ineffectual Affects

According to, well, almost everyone (un-cited), the human mind has to be exposed to a piece of information three times in a short period of time to commit it to long-term memory. In practice, it will probably take either more or less exposure to actually memorize something. That's just how to life works. In theory, practice is the same as theory.

Really, though, I'm more concerned with the extreme ends of the spectrum. What happens if you say something four dozen times? What if you only say it once?

Chances are, nobody's going to remember. In the first case, 99% of the time, the exposed will discard not only the repeated information, but likely everything else you say. Hearing something four times is annoying, hearing it fifty times warrants a vicious ear-severing, complete with rusty scalpel and no anesthetic.

The most oft-heard phrase in my dorm/on campus is "I'm looking forward to X!" The second is "The sun is bright!" There are only so many ways to respond to the exact same statement after hearing it daily for fourteen months. As a result, I have trained myself to remain silent (and ignore everything) for around five minutes after one of the aforementioned sentiments is uttered.

In the second case, only saying something once, you'll wind up with a similar result. Nobody's likely to remember it, because, intertwined with everything else you're saying (or writing!), it doesn't have a chance to stand out. For that reason, it's important to repeat something of greater significance and not something of minimal significance.

I've decided to try to keep these posts as succinct as possible (you should see last week's; it's around 98% shorter than normal), so I'm going to leave with one more thought:

Repetition for effect?

No. No. No.

There are approximately 0.43 people on the planet who have a talent for effective repetition. Everyone else comes off as either pretentious or irritating. So unless you're less than half a human, or otherwise know (thinking you know is not the same as knowing) you are very good at what you do, please, spare everyone. There are better (safer) ways to get a point across.

Keep your info-dumps natural and unforced wherever possible. Chances are, if something's actually significant, it'll come up several times, all on its own, over the course of your story. If it doesn't show up, and turns out to be substantially significant, rest assured I'm dismissing your work along with the other mountains of deus ex garbage I've read.