Well, I got off work early(thank god, pizza place was over 100 degrees) and so I tried your suggestion. It solved one issue of the the first word not having 3 duplicates of the first character, however, each word has a duplicate of it's first character. Took a screenshot of what is happening.
Nevermind, I figured it out. It was what you had said, I just forgot to change the current word's char counter to 1 as well.
Thanks, 4sword.