Repetition

It's tricky to repeat yourself effectively in writing (fiction). You don't want to do it unintentionally, too frequently or for unimportant things. But you can use it to good effect. An excerpt from Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett:

There was another thing. Hardly anyone used tinder boxes these days. They bought the big smelly yellow matches the alchemists made. Windle disapproved. Fire was important. You shouldn't be able to switch it on just like that, it didn't show any respect. That was people these days, always rushing around and... fires. Yes, it had been a lot warmer in the old days, too. The kind of fires they had these days didn't warm you up unless you were nearly on top of them. It was something in the wood... it was the wrong sort of wood. Everything was wrong these days. More thin. More fuzzy. No real life in anything. And the days were shorter. Mmm. Something had gone wrong with the days. They were shorter days. Mmm. Everyday took an age to go by, which was odd, because days plural went past like a stampede. There weren't many things people wanted a 130-year-old wizard to do, and Windle had got into the habit of arriving at the dining-table up to two hours before each meal, simply to pass the time.

Endless days, going by fast. Didn't make sense. Mmm. Mind you, you didn't get the sense now that you used to get in the old days.

This is the internal monologue of Windle Poons, the hilariously crotchety old man who (if I recall correctly) forgets to die. He is one of the book's other focuses, besides Death-the-character.

It's interesting to me how this passage repeats itself. It is mostly Windle complaining about how things aren't as good as they used to be, so somewhat redundant in that sense. But it also literally expresses the same idea twice: The days were shorter "these days." It even repeats the hesitation, "Mmm," three times. This gives a vivid idea of what and how Windle thinks much more than just telling us. It's entertaining, too.