Another day in the week and another writing rule to examine and break. What could be better?
The meat and bones analogy. Almost all writers will hear (or use) the analogy of building a human with writing. I, myself, use it quite often.
The rough draft is the skeleton, you use the second draft to add muscles and ligaments, the third draft to add meat and skin, etc. etc.
The meat puppet analogy works because we are familiar with basic anatomy of the human body. Sine we all have one, we know how they work on a very general basis. We are bones at our core, meat and muscle and ligaments hold the bones together, and so on and so forth.
Do you know why we use analogies, though?
I believe that the current terminology is “mansplaining.” We use analogies to explain what something is using a common comparative. Since basic human anatomy is considered common knowledge, we can use the build structure of a body to explain building a novel.
So for today’s prompt, we will break the analogy rule. Let’s take a look.
March 11
Find a few analogies in your WiP and remove them, choosing instead to explain the sections without using analogies at all.
Analogies are easy writing. Most of the time I caution against the easy roads. I love easy, I love simple and quick and lazy. Writing can be all of those things. However, in the beginning it is hard work.
Once you practice and write words and put in your 10,000 hours, things will become easier.
If you start out taking the shortcuts, you won’t have the experience and knowledge to apply them correctly. Soon, you have a work full of words and no meaning.
So today, we will cut out the shortcut and make you take the long road.
Find your analogies, remove them and explain things like a man (pun intended). When you are finished, post your longer versions in the comments below.
