A metaphor is a glorious thing,
A diamond ring,
The first day of summer…
Use them wisely,
Use them well,
And you'll never know the hell of loneliness
The quote above is from the song ‘Metaphor’ by the Sparks (a band who have raked in the money for over 30 years by being uncommercial). Metaphors are a subject close to my heart. I tend to use them rather a lot, both in writing and conversation. I am especially tickled by the scene in the fourth Star Trek movie when Spock asks Jim, ‘Captain, are you sure it’s not time for a colourful metaphor?’ In fact my use of metaphors borders on binge-use, and many is the time when my friends haven’t the faintest what I am on about, and even I may have lost the thread. (Now circle the metaphors in the paragraph above).
But metaphors are useful when writing, so long as I can rein myself in. ‘Metaphor’ is made up of two words that mean, respectively, ‘Over/across’ and ‘carry/bear’. They are things that can carry something across (and can also be overbearing!). I use them – I try to use them – to convey impressions or experiences that would be laborious, complex, or even impossible to describe in literal terms. Since I write a form of fantasy, this happens rather often.
Metaphors can also serve the function that the soundtrack serves in a film. Actually I have lifted this line from Diana Wynne Jones’s book The Tough Guide to Fantasyland – a merciless blitz on fantasy fiction clichés – specifically the part when she lampoons the use of topsy-turvy phrasing to invoke an epic atmosphere (‘sang they with eagerness and sang their swords with them’). But the appropriate use of metaphors can lift a scene from flat description into something mysteriously alive. If I’m writing a climactic scene, don’t be surprised if the metaphors go into overdrive. Think of it as heavenly choirs on the soundtrack.
After all, in the end, ALL words are metaphors. No word is literally the thing it represents. All are just vehicles that ‘carry across’. I think that the difference between ‘ordinary’ words and the ones we choose to call metaphors, is that metaphors are the experiments, the seedlings, the daringly floated possibilities. Metaphors happen when the writer turns alchemist, mixing colourful compounds in the hope of gold, new life, or anything better than the blank expression on people’s faces that I’ve learned over the years to dread.
3 comments:
Metaphors and word origins...ah, like a double shot of espresso!
I know it's geeky to think that readers will recognize the origins of a word or a name, but some part of me thinks that the roots of words work like deep magic on your brain, and (like your soundtrack metaphor) add something to the prose.
Funny, I know exactly what you mean. I'm convinced that we are hard-wired to recognise 'genuine' language as opposed to meaningless sounds, even if it's a language several removes from our own. E.g. Tolkien's elvish works so well because it's created by a professor of language who knew what he was doing (contrast Klingon). Something definitely happens at a subconscious level when we hear certain words, as if each one carries a 'trace' of all its previous usages... like Dust. (Wow, PP and JRRT in one Comment).
I do like the idea of words like seeds carrying ideas out and about. Thistledown words blown on a wind of the blog.
I love it when a writer makes you see something of the world in a new way.
I love it when you find the words of a writer from far away or long ago and they speak so clearly as if to you and you alone.
I love it when you find yourself tangled in a story and falling in love with characters made of black and white symbols on a paper page, 26 letters. Alchemy. Magic.
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