Looking Back Syndrome 😆 · The Storyteller's Path

Rose Barber

3d • Writing Support ✍️

Looking Back Syndrome 😆

During my first read-through edit of Nigredo Manifesto, I noticed something that made me laugh.

In one chapter alone, I found seven different uses of “looking back.”

At first I thought, okay Rose, we get it. You are looking back. 😂

But the more I noticed it, the more interesting it became.

“Looking back” wasn’t just repetitive wording. It was an orientation phrase.

While I was writing my own life, especially difficult parts of it, I was constantly placing myself somewhere between then and now. “Looking back” helped me create enough distance to see the experience, interpret it, and put it into language.

So yes, I’ll probably rework a lot of those sentences during editing because the reader doesn’t need to be reminded every few paragraphs that the narrator is speaking from the present.

But I’m not mad at the phrase anymore.

It may have been scaffolding.

Sometimes repetition isn’t only weak writing.

Sometimes it shows you how the writer was able to approach the material in the first place.

Now that the story is on the page, I can remove some of the scaffolding without removing the perspective that made the writing possible.

Has anyone else found a phrase they apparently leaned on a lot once they started editing? 😆📖

4 comments

Looking Back Syndrome 😆