Figures of speech enliven our poems and stories. My favorite is metaphor. There’s an old silly saying, “What’s a metaphor for?” I say metaphors are for doing life-enhancing jobs, like surgeons. Acting as a surgeon, a metaphor can inject life into a tired sentence, replace a worn-out cliché, and heal a broken story. Merriam-Webster tells us metaphor is “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in drowning in money).” Or as in metaphors are surgeons. (If I’d used simile instead of metaphor, we’d have metaphors are like surgeons.)
Metaphor: What’s it to you?
Metaphor material surrounds us. Even you might be a metaphor. Think about your childhood. Here’s a vignette from mine. When I was eight years old, my mother arranged for me to take swimming lessons that summer at the only house in our neighborhood that had a built-in swimming pool. My teacher, Sylvia, was a big sister in a bathing suit. As her only student, I had a unique gift: her 100% focused attention on me — a squirmy, splashy, wannabe swimmer. Two mornings a week, in my bright red tank suit, I climbed down the curved concrete steps in the corner of the pool. In the cool blue water, I learned and practiced the American crawl, the backstroke, the side stroke. Out of the corner of my eye, the diving board called, and I hoped to be brave enough by the end of summer to jump off.
One day I was struggling, trying to do the side stroke, while Sylvia cheered me on from her usual position on the pool deck, her silver whistle dangling from a chain around her neck. Suddenly I heard her call out, “Keep it up, Tadpole!” Good old Merriam-Webster tells us a tadpole is a “Frog or toad larva that has a rounded body with a long tail bordered by fins and external gills soon replaced by internal gills and that undergoes a metamorphosis to the adult.” Sylvia saw me as a little larva that one day would out-grow that little red swimsuit and even dive like a frog off the board. In becoming a swimmer, I’d become a metaphor!
Use appropriate metaphors
In Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King (I think this is one of the best on the topic), the authors point out that metaphors should be appropriate to their context and not draw attention to themselves. Here’s the example of what not to do from a draft of Peter Cooper’s novel Billy Shakes. “‘As a matter of fact, Lucy, it may be that Rose is pregnant.’ His eyes were a dark, dark blue, stolen jewels in a setting of bone. ‘But I can assure you that I am not the father.’” Browne and King point out: “The metaphor, the dark blue stolen jewels in a setting of bone, strains for effect. Yet the problem isn’t the unworkability of the metaphor but its presence in the scene in the first place.” (203). I agree. It’s a dark blue ring in a bowl of soup.
Other minds on metaphor
Years ago, while prowling a used bookstore, I found an enjoyable and thought-provoking book about linguistics and philosophy by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson titled, Metaphors We Live By. The authors make a compelling case for how metaphors are built into the way we think. “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. … human thought processes are largely metaphorical. This is what we mean when we say that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. Metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person’s conceptual system.” The authors provide abundant examples, including the way we view time as money: “I don’t have the time to give you.” “How do you spend your time these days?” and how we conceive of argument as war: “Your claims are indefensible.” “I demolished his argument.”
Off the diving board
Back to Tadpole. While writing your next poem, story, novel, or memoir, spend time coming up with a metaphor that fits precisely with your theme, maybe one you’ve never heard or used before, which means no clichés like, “Flat as a pancake.” Perhaps you can give your piece a metaphorical title. For my memoir, I chose, Undertow, a metaphor tied to specific events disclosed in the story. That was my high-dive off the board. What’s yours?
Niki Kantzios
Thanks for a fresh way of thinking about metaphor. I like your point that figure of speech shouldn’t call attention to themselves.
Jerry Tabbott
Enjoyed your article, and made me wonder to the extent I might have already used metaphors in my writing (I think we may all do it subconsciously) . And while I’d have to go back and read my past work with a fresh eye to find them within my chapters, I realized I’ve used them heavily in naming my chapters (fond of those).
Most are recognizable memes people relate to things or events, but evoke some sense of the scene about to unfold.
“Who’s on First” is the start of a classic comic routine, but seemed a fitting title to where my protagonists awaken confused, sealed aboard their ship, the Sally’s Pride (abducted ship and all by aliens), and try to analyze what has happened.
“Dinner and a Show,” another meme. A UFO believer has been anxiously hoping to hear the truth from the only crew member to escape when the Sally’s Pride disappeared, but he finds the full truth too unbelievable until given a demonstration (show) of alien technology on a country road outside a redneck restaurant.
“Picnic in the Meadow” When after months have passed, her missing mother and son (abducted aboard the Sally’s Pride) call out of the blue and arrange to meet secretly in an obscure area near her daughters archaeological dig, Katie and her husband find a spot nestled between trees, park, and wait. They suspect the disappearance was related to a government project and assume a helicopter will show up. They’re surprised when a sizable space ship shows up, but their determination to reunite with their son quickly erases their hesitation.
Most of my chapter titles are deliberately playful hints at the contents. I found appropriate places to use “What’s on Second, I Don’t Know, and Third Base” to complete the Abbott and Costello routine. Some other memes are “Fairy Tales,” and twisted memes like “Let Lying Dogs Sleep” and “The Short and Long of It.” But all significantly tip readers where their scenes are going. I’ve had nothing but fun doing it. Plus naming chapters makes it so easy to locate specific scenes when I want to go back to one.