I tend to use "as" as a substitute for "because" a lot , probably because "as" is a much shorter word but it's starting to worry me. How would my readers respond to this? Example paragraph: Tydeus knew the layout of the land like the back of his hand as he'd grown up playing in these mountains. Even though his father was king and he'd been forced to learn the ways of the court, he never truly felt the pull of it. He had more love for the outdoors than the stuffy castle walls and it showed. He was in his prime, his body lithe and muscular as he'd ventured out across these mountains more times than he cared to remember. Came up with this on the fly, so to speak, so forgive the terrible writing. As you can see two uses of the word as in one paragraph. Does it annoy you as much as it does me? Sorry if this might sound like a vague question but I have nothing else to go on.
On account of born from yielded by owing to due to by reason of You've won the big part of your battle by being aware of the repetition. With some practice and focus on such stumbling blocks the alternatives will bed themselves in and eventually become second nature.
Often, even usually, you can just leave the link implied and trust the reader to figure it out. Tydeus knew the layout of the land like the back of his hand--he'd grown up playing in these mountains. Even though his father was king and he'd been forced to learn the ways of the court, he never truly felt the pull of it. He had more love for the outdoors than the stuffy castle walls. He was in his prime, his body lithe and muscular, and he had ventured out across these mountains more times than he cared to remember.
"As" works fine for me in that example. I'd put a comma in front of it I think. I've seen "as" used that way plenty in writing, and I also know people who use it that way in speech.
I have nothing against using as but I would break both of those sentences up into two parts. Especially the second example since the thought in the first half is not related to the second half. Tydeus knew the layout of the land like the back of his hand. He grew up playing in these mountains and loved the lush shades of green that permeated the land. He was in his prime, his body lithe and muscular. He'd ventured out across these mountains more times than he cared to remember.
You could also switch it around to read "Having grown up playing in these mountains, Tydeus knew the layout of the land like the back of his hand" - word substitutions are good, but if you keep repeating something because you keep using the same sentence structure, that's something to keep an eye on too.
