Demystifying Metaphor: One Writer’s Journey to Livelier Figurative Language
by Art Edwards
Writers' Journal
2007
Great metaphors are born, not made.
This is the conclusion I came to after nine years of dedicated fiction writing, all of my attempts at figurative language falling dead in the water (See, I’m not kidding). How could it be anything but divine intervention that yielded those beautiful tropes in the works of Updike, Morrison, and Lorrie Moore? Truly, some are blessed with the comparison gene, and others aren’t. Mine were so weak I’d learned to live without them; if it was going to be banal, cliché, or just plain bad, it wasn’t going to find its way into my final draft. Their absence left my work wanting, the prose lean and elegant, but reluctant to soar.
In a recent late draft of my novel-in-progress, I decided to do everything I could to increase the potency of my figurative language. During this process, I discovered something quite different from what I’d expected. Good tropes don’t come from some magical, mystical place. They come from a place familiar to any practicing writer: hard work.
“We were this close,” Octave says. He holds his thumb and forefinger together,…”
Here’s a place in my novel where I wanted a riveting metaphor. Octave, a music equipment store owner and former guitar player, is recounting his band’s near-miss at getting a record contract twelve years previous. As I pictured Octave’s fingers, I couldn’t get past the visual of a bird’s beak. Then I pictured a baby bird being fed by its mother. I sensed a connection; musicians trying to get record contracts are in a way like baby birds trying to be fed by the record industry. I had my metaphor. When I put the sentence together I got,
“We were this close,” Octave says. He holds his thumb and forefinger together, a baby bird wanting to be fed by its mother.
I was finished, a metaphor in the metaphor place, but I didn’t feel great about it. While not altogether wrong, did this metaphor really resonate, bringing the character and moment to life in a rich, evocative way? My honest answer was not really. It somehow didn’t quite mesh. Is Octave really trying to “be fed” at that point in his life? He’s forty years old and the owner of a music equipment store; he’s well beyond the days of begging for a record contract. He’s recounting a story from his past, a story of disappointment, of shattered hopes. Somehow, baby birds didn’t tell me much about him.
That was when I remembered something Lewis Buzbee, my writing instructor and mentor at the University of San Francisco, had told me about metaphor. He said that the “vehicle” of the metaphor, in this case the bird’s beak, should tell us a great deal about the “tenor,” in this case Octave’s gesture. Obvious, right? But the metaphor that truly works is the one that works the other way, too. That is, the tenor tells us as much about the vehicle as vice-versa. The two should speak to each other in this special, vibrant way, a way we all recognize when we come across a good one and go, Ah.
Back to the drawing board. The fingers close together, Octave’s shattered dream. An arrow? Too pointy. A needle, as in “threading the needle”? Cliché, and Octave’s gesture doesn’t look like the eye of a needle. Finally, I got to thinking of the space as a goal, like a field goal in football. The connection between Octave’s band’s goal and a field goal was strong. I liked that both spaces represented the difference between success and failure, the need to get between, to bridge the gap. Here’s what I had when I tried it.
“We were this close,” Octave says. He holds his thumb and forefinger together, the uprights of a field goal.
I was on the right track, but the metaphor still felt flawed. Octave’s fingers weren’t straight like the uprights of a football field goal. Also, and perhaps more importantly, Octave’s use of the phrase, “We were this close,” implies that his band was unsuccessful, thereby making the wide breadth of a field goal misleading; a kicker has at least a decent chance of making it. At this point in Octave’s life, his past attempts at signing a record deal are better described as fancy, a pipe dream, almost impossible to achieve. Impossible. The word fit. After a few attempts at sentence arrangement, I came up with this.
“We were this close,” Octave says. He holds his thumb and forefinger together, the uprights of an impossible field goal.
With the inclusion of the word “impossible,” I’d found the hook that linked the vehicle with the tenor. Of course, it’s an impossible field goal, not a football field goal at all but some strange yet enticing sport, an unlevel playing field, goals almost impossible to achieve but many trying anyway. These uprights weren’t straight, just like Octave’s fingers, just like the game Octave had tried to win and failed at.
I don’t write all of this to impress everyone with my great metaphor. I write to show that the process of coming up with the right metaphor isn’t as simple as waiting for the right metaphor to fall on you. The difference of taking a little time, of using your critical faculties, of going deeper--and deeper still--is worth it in the end. That bird’s beak seems miles away.
Examples of going one deeper can happen from book to book. In both of my novels, I describe the Phoenix skyline with figurative language. As I revised my second novel, I wanted to come up with a better trope than the one in the first novel. Here’s what I wrote in the first novel.
The skyline of Phoenix, with its jagged underbite of skyscrapers,...
Despite the fact that I liked this metaphor, I started picking it apart. Wasn’t “jagged underbite” the wrong visual? The Phoenix skyline has few skyscrapers in it. It’s more sporatic, more hit-and-miss. “Jagged underbite” suggests a row of teeth, imperfect but bunched and plentiful, more like Manhattan’s skyline. I used this fact as the starting point for the image in my second novel.
The few skyscrapers poked up like...
I needed an arresting visual, something better than “jagged underbite.” The narrator and his friend are up on a mountain after a night of drinking. Both are frustrated with their lives, their respective bands, their fates in rock ‘n’ roll. It’s late, and the city’s lights radiate into the sky, creating a celestial dome. The lights made me think of church, of church pipes, a pretty image, but too formal, and too uniform. Stalagmites hinted at the sparse, random nature of the skyline, but that was too far out, too distant from what the narrator was going through. Finally, I grabbed onto the image of matches in a matchbook. Here’s how it read.
The few skyscrapers poked up like matches in a matchbook.
This felt close, and appropriate since both characters had just come from a bar. Still, I had a more specific image in mind. My narrator wouldn’t see the skyline as a crisp, new book of matches. He’s drunk, disenchanted, second-guessing the decisions he’s made in his life. He’d see the buildings as those few matches that are left when a book is close to being finished, as likely thrown away as used up. The idea resonated with me. I messed with word order and came up with this.
The few skyscrapers poked up like unused matches in an old book.
This simile best conveys what the Phoenix skyline looks like, and it also conveys the narrator’s frustration with his life, that he’s been used, that he’s almost finished, but that he still has fire, still could ignite. I had it. With a few minutes of extra time, I’d made what I thought was a decent trope into something better, and not once did the metaphor god intervene. I just thought about it, came up with the best thing I could, and thought about it some more. In other words, I got to work.
by Art Edwards
Writers' Journal
2007
Great metaphors are born, not made.
This is the conclusion I came to after nine years of dedicated fiction writing, all of my attempts at figurative language falling dead in the water (See, I’m not kidding). How could it be anything but divine intervention that yielded those beautiful tropes in the works of Updike, Morrison, and Lorrie Moore? Truly, some are blessed with the comparison gene, and others aren’t. Mine were so weak I’d learned to live without them; if it was going to be banal, cliché, or just plain bad, it wasn’t going to find its way into my final draft. Their absence left my work wanting, the prose lean and elegant, but reluctant to soar.
In a recent late draft of my novel-in-progress, I decided to do everything I could to increase the potency of my figurative language. During this process, I discovered something quite different from what I’d expected. Good tropes don’t come from some magical, mystical place. They come from a place familiar to any practicing writer: hard work.
“We were this close,” Octave says. He holds his thumb and forefinger together,…”
Here’s a place in my novel where I wanted a riveting metaphor. Octave, a music equipment store owner and former guitar player, is recounting his band’s near-miss at getting a record contract twelve years previous. As I pictured Octave’s fingers, I couldn’t get past the visual of a bird’s beak. Then I pictured a baby bird being fed by its mother. I sensed a connection; musicians trying to get record contracts are in a way like baby birds trying to be fed by the record industry. I had my metaphor. When I put the sentence together I got,
“We were this close,” Octave says. He holds his thumb and forefinger together, a baby bird wanting to be fed by its mother.
I was finished, a metaphor in the metaphor place, but I didn’t feel great about it. While not altogether wrong, did this metaphor really resonate, bringing the character and moment to life in a rich, evocative way? My honest answer was not really. It somehow didn’t quite mesh. Is Octave really trying to “be fed” at that point in his life? He’s forty years old and the owner of a music equipment store; he’s well beyond the days of begging for a record contract. He’s recounting a story from his past, a story of disappointment, of shattered hopes. Somehow, baby birds didn’t tell me much about him.
That was when I remembered something Lewis Buzbee, my writing instructor and mentor at the University of San Francisco, had told me about metaphor. He said that the “vehicle” of the metaphor, in this case the bird’s beak, should tell us a great deal about the “tenor,” in this case Octave’s gesture. Obvious, right? But the metaphor that truly works is the one that works the other way, too. That is, the tenor tells us as much about the vehicle as vice-versa. The two should speak to each other in this special, vibrant way, a way we all recognize when we come across a good one and go, Ah.
Back to the drawing board. The fingers close together, Octave’s shattered dream. An arrow? Too pointy. A needle, as in “threading the needle”? Cliché, and Octave’s gesture doesn’t look like the eye of a needle. Finally, I got to thinking of the space as a goal, like a field goal in football. The connection between Octave’s band’s goal and a field goal was strong. I liked that both spaces represented the difference between success and failure, the need to get between, to bridge the gap. Here’s what I had when I tried it.
“We were this close,” Octave says. He holds his thumb and forefinger together, the uprights of a field goal.
I was on the right track, but the metaphor still felt flawed. Octave’s fingers weren’t straight like the uprights of a football field goal. Also, and perhaps more importantly, Octave’s use of the phrase, “We were this close,” implies that his band was unsuccessful, thereby making the wide breadth of a field goal misleading; a kicker has at least a decent chance of making it. At this point in Octave’s life, his past attempts at signing a record deal are better described as fancy, a pipe dream, almost impossible to achieve. Impossible. The word fit. After a few attempts at sentence arrangement, I came up with this.
“We were this close,” Octave says. He holds his thumb and forefinger together, the uprights of an impossible field goal.
With the inclusion of the word “impossible,” I’d found the hook that linked the vehicle with the tenor. Of course, it’s an impossible field goal, not a football field goal at all but some strange yet enticing sport, an unlevel playing field, goals almost impossible to achieve but many trying anyway. These uprights weren’t straight, just like Octave’s fingers, just like the game Octave had tried to win and failed at.
I don’t write all of this to impress everyone with my great metaphor. I write to show that the process of coming up with the right metaphor isn’t as simple as waiting for the right metaphor to fall on you. The difference of taking a little time, of using your critical faculties, of going deeper--and deeper still--is worth it in the end. That bird’s beak seems miles away.
Examples of going one deeper can happen from book to book. In both of my novels, I describe the Phoenix skyline with figurative language. As I revised my second novel, I wanted to come up with a better trope than the one in the first novel. Here’s what I wrote in the first novel.
The skyline of Phoenix, with its jagged underbite of skyscrapers,...
Despite the fact that I liked this metaphor, I started picking it apart. Wasn’t “jagged underbite” the wrong visual? The Phoenix skyline has few skyscrapers in it. It’s more sporatic, more hit-and-miss. “Jagged underbite” suggests a row of teeth, imperfect but bunched and plentiful, more like Manhattan’s skyline. I used this fact as the starting point for the image in my second novel.
The few skyscrapers poked up like...
I needed an arresting visual, something better than “jagged underbite.” The narrator and his friend are up on a mountain after a night of drinking. Both are frustrated with their lives, their respective bands, their fates in rock ‘n’ roll. It’s late, and the city’s lights radiate into the sky, creating a celestial dome. The lights made me think of church, of church pipes, a pretty image, but too formal, and too uniform. Stalagmites hinted at the sparse, random nature of the skyline, but that was too far out, too distant from what the narrator was going through. Finally, I grabbed onto the image of matches in a matchbook. Here’s how it read.
The few skyscrapers poked up like matches in a matchbook.
This felt close, and appropriate since both characters had just come from a bar. Still, I had a more specific image in mind. My narrator wouldn’t see the skyline as a crisp, new book of matches. He’s drunk, disenchanted, second-guessing the decisions he’s made in his life. He’d see the buildings as those few matches that are left when a book is close to being finished, as likely thrown away as used up. The idea resonated with me. I messed with word order and came up with this.
The few skyscrapers poked up like unused matches in an old book.
This simile best conveys what the Phoenix skyline looks like, and it also conveys the narrator’s frustration with his life, that he’s been used, that he’s almost finished, but that he still has fire, still could ignite. I had it. With a few minutes of extra time, I’d made what I thought was a decent trope into something better, and not once did the metaphor god intervene. I just thought about it, came up with the best thing I could, and thought about it some more. In other words, I got to work.