Metaphors are the cold knife in your side. They are the speed bumps that keep you from picking up writing momentum. They are the hidden monster lurking in the closet of ... of ... oh, darn it. Metaphors are tough, no doubt about it. But approached methodically, metaphors can be the spice in the cuisine that is your written work!
Instructions
1. Understand what a metaphor is and is not. The metaphor associates two seemingly unassociated things by saying that one of them is the other. "Her heart is a sphere of crystalline ice," for example. It is a figurative comparison of two things that in reality have nothing to do with each other. The metaphor is perhaps the strongest figurative type of comparison, greater than analogy, simile, allegory or parable. The metaphor is NOT:
*analogy - comparison of two pairs of things, a:b::c:d (e.g. hot is to cold as fire is to ice). Analogy can be used to make a satirical point, as in "President Bush said he was a 'Uniter, not a divider,' but given his track record Bush is a Uniter like Machiavelli was a humanitarian." While not linear, Spencer's 16th century analogy is subtly sublime, "My love is like to ice and I to fire..."
*simile - compares two things by saying one is "like" the other. For example: It hit me like a ton of bricks, The snow covered the yard like a think winter blanket. Note that the only difference here is the use of the word "like." The same expression as a metaphor reads The snow is a thick winter blanket covering the yard.
*allegory - an extended story in which people, things or ideas represent other things, giving the story two meanings, one literal and one symbolic. Examples include Spencer's The Faerie Queen and Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress.
*parable - a story that demonstrates the teller's point or lesson. Famous examples include Aesop's Fables (e.g. a mighty lion spares a puny mouse who later frees the lion from a hunter's trap carries the lesson that even the weak have their strengths), and the parables of Christianity's Jesus (e.g. the least of God's creatures such as birds find homes and food so surely God will care for his children).
2. Use your imagination. Think about what you're trying to describe. What qualities does it have? Brainstorm and make a list. Does it lie there? Does it fly? Does it hurt? Don't invest too much brainpower, just jot down whatever comes to mind.
For example, if I were trying to come up with a poetic metaphor for the moon, my list might include "moves slowly, floats, glows, rises and sets, surrounded by darkness."
3. Expand the list. Now list unrelated things that share those same qualities.
Using the same example, my list could now say, "moves slowly like a snail, floats like a feather, glows like a flashlight, rises and sets like the sun, surrounded by darkness like a lonely face in the night."
4. Flesh things out. Now is the time to invest some thought. Try to tie as many comparisons as you can both back to your original object and to your comparing object. Be flexible and willing to discard an idea if a better one comes to mind. Maybe only one comparison jumps out at you. That's OK, run with it. Hopefully you'll begin to develop an overriding theme for your metaphor as you tie the ideas together.
In the moon example, my train of thought might run as follows: "I like the lonely face idea. Do people move slowly? Yes, especially when they're swimming. Sure, ok, I can keep that. Do people float? They do float in water, maybe I have a theme developing here... They don't glow... but wait, maybe my person is pale against the darkness... maybe they're dead. I'll keep that. Ok, do people rise and set? Sure when they get up and go to bed, maybe this works and maybe not. But keeping with the water/swimming theme, maybe I can say the rising and setting is like bobbing in the water. This is getting a little morbid, but it's working as a metaphor..."
5. Write your thoughts out. If you're comfortable going directly into metaphor, skip ahead a few steps. If not, write your thoughts out as similes in a paragraph.
The moon is like a white face. The moon bobs up in the sky like a dead white face might slowly bob up in an inky black pool. The moon floats gently across the sky like something floating downstream in a very slow current.
6. Weave your thoughts together. Edit your paragraph into a coherent thought. Use your vocabulary to avoid redundancy.
The moon is like a white face that bobs up from an inky black pool, slowly moving downstream like a body in a stagnant, melancholy current.
7. Make it a true metaphor. Remove the "likes." Say that your old object IS the new object.
The moon is a dead white face, slowly rising to the surface of the inky black pool of the sky. The body slowly floats across the stagnant pool, slipping once again into cold darkness.
8. Weave it into greater work. Add your metaphor into a greater written work. Add characters, theme, plot and style.
Leaning back on my haunches, I nervously smoke, wondering what led me here, how could I have done what I had done. The cold night surrounds me, its icy breath reaching through my thin jacket, caressing my skin like lovingly teasing undead fingers, and chilling my wet trousers like icy serpents constricting my legs. Out of the inky blackness her cold, white, dead face slowly rises to the surface and stares down at me. My heart pounds for hours on end as I watch her watching me from her watery grave, slowly drifting across the stagnant, melancholy black pool of the sky before slipping once more below the surface. I know now I will never escape her.
Here we created a greater work in which our metaphor works. Our character has done something horrible. His (or maybe even her!) pants are wet and he speaks of someone coming back from a 'watery grave.' Did he drown her? Did he kill her and dispose of her body in water?
Our first metaphor is the cold air's "icy breath." Air doesn't really have breath. It just drifts and blows. But here we imply it acts like a cold breath.
We have a simile in saying the air caresses his skin like undead fingers.
We have another simile in saying his wet trousers cling to his legs like serpents.
Now our big metaphor kicks in. We imply the rising moon IS the victim's cold, pale, dead face.
Our metaphor extends to the sky by calling it a stagnant black pool.
We conclude our metaphor by saying the "face" that IS the moon 'slips' once more below the surface, when in fact it's only the moon setting.
Tags: black pool, white face, inky black, inky black pool, your thoughts