Random Writerly Gripe
Mar. 23rd, 2007 12:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseTo keep myself a bit in the mindset for writing fiction, but not to overwhelm the need to write essays (Two to go....), I've been looking over older work instead of poking at "Soldier". This has led me to two conclusions.
1) My characters sigh too much.
2) The Porcupine Law. It's a corollary to the Moss-Troll Problem as discussed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrissa and truepenny, esp. Here. In short, however hard you try to avoid using similes and other language your characters wouldn't know about, even to the point of having to invent moss-trolls in the course of inventing an appropriate comparison, there will always ALWAYS be some reference somewhere to a Goddamn Porcupine*.
*This may be a metaphoric porcupine that bears no resemblance to an actual porcupine. The setting may be one in which porcupines could perfectly well exist, but battleaxes don't, and the Goddamn Porcupine is not a porcupine but a battleaxe. But the exact moment I realised this was a law of writing along with "All Books are Broken" involved a Porcupine, and considering that it links back totruepenny, it seemed an appropriate enough name.
1) My characters sigh too much.
2) The Porcupine Law. It's a corollary to the Moss-Troll Problem as discussed by
mrissa and truepenny, esp. Here. In short, however hard you try to avoid using similes and other language your characters wouldn't know about, even to the point of having to invent moss-trolls in the course of inventing an appropriate comparison, there will always ALWAYS be some reference somewhere to a Goddamn Porcupine*.*This may be a metaphoric porcupine that bears no resemblance to an actual porcupine. The setting may be one in which porcupines could perfectly well exist, but battleaxes don't, and the Goddamn Porcupine is not a porcupine but a battleaxe. But the exact moment I realised this was a law of writing along with "All Books are Broken" involved a Porcupine, and considering that it links back to
truepenny, it seemed an appropriate enough name.
