I mean, this is a story about a teen who fights off an army of vampires for goodness sake. I'm not writing a research paper on mesothelioma. I've fixed all the newbie mistakes and am concentrating on the story arcs and overall cohesion. I want this to be a fun read and have people dig my work. Not that I'm spending a lot of time on this, but a friend wanted to make a big deal over the term "incoherent babble", stating that all babble is incoherent. He stated that if I use redundancies like this, the work will be summarily rejected by all. I see his point, but I can also see there being people that babble coherently, but what they say is foolish or they carry on long after they said what they needed to say. Not trying to discount the assistance - lord knows I need all the help I can get - but I can see how it's easy to get bogged down by hapless minutia. I certainly don't want my work to be rejected over something as asinine as this.
Not all babble is incoherent. https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/babble_2 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/babble
I think you can babble coherently. Your friend sounds kind of nuts though. If it bothers you, you could write "babble crazily" or something like that.
What page or word count does this phrase occur and are there other examples? If that's the worst case of redundancy I wouldn't worry about it, but they should be scrutinized. It might help to see the context. I could see someone having an issue if you wrote something like "he spoke in an incoherent babble no one understood" - it's redundant but not because of 'incoherent babble'.
One of the most common edits is to delete redundancies in descriptions. So he's definitely right about that. But it doesn't mean that every instance is wrong. Everything said twice is emphasized. All emphasis shows importance. What I usually do with these sorts of things is 1) notice the guideline I'm ignoring * 2) simplify the text around the phrase to accommodate the guideline. You want to make sure that the reader understands that what you did is deliberate. Get everything around it playing by the book and then the problem phrase won't be a problem. So in your case, just don't pile on descriptives in the surrounding lines. This assumes that what you're dealing with is an outright error. "Incoherent babble" is a pretty tame example. Sometimes you want that extra word just for the space it fills in the sentence. It's establishing a pleasing rhythm. My fix (if you even agree it's necessary) uses rules of contrast. That's from the visual arts, but it works for me. I probably also shouldn't act like there's an algorithm to fixing these issues. There are tricks that address the problem, but you can't just apply a flowchart to a sentence and correct it every time. So he's got a point, a very good one. Keep it in mind but don't follow it slavishly. (* Also, don't call it a rule. Rules have arbiters and penalties.)
Psycho babble, techno babble, sports babble- incomprehensible to non-initiates, but not necessarily incoherent.
Your point about wanting the extra word to fill in the sentence is a good one. I make a HUGE effort to set a pleasing rhythm to my sentences. Nothing too long, nothing too short, I think it makes my writing easier to flow through. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten frustrated by other people's chop. I try to keep the obvious examples of redundancy to a minimum, but I don't think it pays to be obsessive over it. Anyways, thanks for the help!
I'm sure if I listened to Steven Hawking or Albert Einstein lecture about quantum physics it would be so far over my head that it could sound like technobabble like Catriona so nicely states, but that doesn't mean it's incoherent or non-sensical.
Speaking of techno-babble: synchronise the transporter's annular confinement beam to the warp core frequency! Somehow, the energy emitted by the singularity shifted the chroniton particles in our hull into a high state of temporal polarisation! Sorry guys! My inner Star Trek nerd got out and I couldn't resist ...
@trevorD Repetitious and filler words can spoil the flow of your prose. The Word Processor is use (Papyrus Author) has a built-in Style guide that points out all these 'errors'. Many of these 'errors' I use can be changed, others I keep, for reasons which are obvious to me due to what I am saying at the time. I do find though that eliminating these words tightens up my writing. Generally I like the changes I make as a result of these 'error' removals. All that being said: If incoherent babbling is what you want to say and is appropriate for the situation, leave it in. As was mentioned above; some babbling is coherent, some is not.
I am late in the game but I just joined. Sorry. If your character is speaking the incoherent babble and the reader understands what's happening, that's fine. A good thing to read to "tighten up" your book is Strunk and White. Their guide to grammar is flawless. One thing I learned is to minimize your use of adverbs. I did this in my manuscript, but I do it in letters too. It makes a difference. Hope this helps some.
Sure, "incoherent babble" is a redundancy 90% of the time people say it - but that doesn't keep them from saying it. In dialogue or in the voice of a first-person narrator, that phrase would probably work - because it fits the objective of making the speech sound true-to life. In a detached third-person narrative, it almost certainly doesn't work because likely fails the objective of choosing the most direct route between your imagination and the reader's. Context is everything. And in relation to your original question, I'd argue one can never be too picky but you need to make sure you're picking the right things. Common turns of phrase (like "incoherent babble") are fine in spoken dialogue or a lifelike narrator's voice, but intrusive and distracting in most other situations.
