Anyone else consciously do this? Anything from naming a character or a place after something to the more subtle stuff? I'm asking because I'm thinking about building my story pretty much solely from stuff about astrology (as much as anything else because I want to focus more on character interraction than on the plot itself, which is more of a means to an end), and I'd like to know if I'm wasting my time.
I know of several authors who do things like that and have it as a running metaphor ['my sisters keeper' by Jodi Picolut has astrology as a theme], and films are well known for intertexual references. So yes I think that would work very well. Sometimes I'll do little things, mostly with names. Most people aren't geeks over that so it's more for my own satisfaction It sounds a very interesting idea.
I dont get what you mean? Actually when I was renting rooms - one of the landladies used to be an astrologer - its not what you think these days - she was in it for the money and had loads of premium rate numbers you could call that earned her £10 a throw. She knew about astrology but I think she was too general when she did a reading of my stars etc and she could have been talking about anyone. She sort of took it serious or semi-serious when she talked about it but I never saw her slaving away over charts. I may as well have had a reading by Russell Grant or Mystic Meg for all it was worth. Then a friend of hers that I met at a party said that all her psychic and astrologer friends were having a laugh rakin it in with them premium rate numbers - and that they started off by having a few sex chat lines that got closed down
Well, an example from literature: in House Of Leaves, the blind author Zampan˜, a former member of the foreign legion, is assisted in writing by various women, who are (apparently) named after the trenches used in the Napoleonic wars, or something like that. In a much less subtle way, a person could have a character named after someone from mythology, perhaps a figure who represents something of relevance to the character (say a love interest named Venus). Oh, I don't believe in astrology personally. But it's different. I don't think it can be applied to this world, but I'm wondering if, since I'm creating a world, I can apply astrological readings to it.
