Similes and Metaphors 101 · 1:20pm Nov 10th, 2014
The cold tore at them like daggers of ice.
Raise your hand if you have ever been stabbed before. Everyone give that one guy in the back a hug. As for the rest of you, I think it is time for a little talk...
Bare metaphor
What do you actually think when you see the above? Perhaps something like:
The cold caused them great physical discomfort.
A metaphor or simile is an attempt to get the reader to understand something extraordinary in terms of the more familiar and ordinary. When we use metaphor to convey immediate feelings or sensations, we are more or less leaning on the reader to cut and paste the sensation of our choosing from their imagination into the story. If they are not familiar with the idea you are drawing on, then that particular wording adds little additional content. It is noise. Given that the author generally turns to them in an attempt to emphasize the extremity of whatever circumstances happen to be around, I personally have a habit of mentally filtering them to a long winded "very."
Descriptive metaphors are better left implicit
Now this is not to say the concept of metaphor is a bad one. I am merely observing that metaphor is not a substitute for thoughtful description. What am I supposed to make of this ice-dagger cold? Is it so cold that your character's skin is spontaneously lacerating somehow? Is it merely cold beyond all reason? What specific point are you trying to make with your choice of words and why not put things more simply?
It is far better to jot down our metaphor in our author's notes and then write our actual description as though the relevant details we were trying to get at via the metaphor were the case. For instance, in our metaphor, we find the cold is some kind of assailant with relation to our characters and its weapons stab and slash. So why not put those ideas into something more concrete:
The cold tore open their lips and froze the blood.
Now the description is more vivid. Cold has a real meaning to our characters now: it viciously makes their lips destroyed and frozen. Now the story is providing aspects of what it is trying to describe, so most any reader can sit down and put it all together with little prior life experience. The author might even take the fact further to suppose characters with lips this abused might stutter dialog later on, which gives the description some real impact after it is brought up.
Humans ultimately comprehend new sensations through experience. We question whether this detail is going to kill us or mess up our plans or make us a hayburger. If none of the above, we generally ignore it. It therefore makes the most sense to explore sensory details through the more tangible adjective and verb driven description, not abstract metaphor. Especially not the fantasticly bombastic metaphors that are all too often more distant from our actual experience than the things they are trying to relate.
Metaphor is like onions
So, now that we know what not to do with metaphors, what do we actually do with them? Like any fancy literary structure, metaphor should be used when layering the figurative meaning on top of the literal meaning adds additional insight or when using the metaphor otherwise communicates more information more clearly than simply writing it all out literally. If you wanted to, could you stop directly after using your metaphor and write an extra paragraph unpacking the relevant details and what they mean for your story? I am not suggesting that actually writing the paragraph is advisable, but making sure you know what exactly you are trying to convey through that metaphor will enable you to more judiciously choose when you use them and what you ultimately use as a point of comparison.
However, note that the audience does not have all day to go chasing down obscure references. A successful metaphor has a bit to grab and go. The rest of their power lies in choosing a wording that gives your reader a lot to chew over afterwards or during re-readings. Context plays a huge part in how readers are going to examine your metaphor. If Twilight instantly comes up with an answer for Rainbow Dash's idle musings, Dash might exclaim that Twi is a computer: that lightning fast thing that will think everything for you. If Dash is trying to explain "coolness" in little words and Twi still just doesn't get it, Twilight is a computer: that thing that is supposed to be smarter than me but does not know how to do what I want. We can go deeper still: suppose Dash is using slang that Twi has no clue what to do with? Garbage in, garbage out. Who has the problem now?
Similes are weaksauce
For a metaphor AND simile blog, I have certainly been talking a lot about metaphor. But this is by design. What is a simile but a metaphor using "like" or "as"? Most people are familiar with figures of speech. We know what you did there. We do not need markers indicating something is being figurative. Furthermore, the point of a metaphor is the insistence that thing A has a lot in common with thing B. The idea is the similarity. When we bring in a "like", we are lampshading that the two things are not the same. As such, the extra word ends up weakening the comparison.
This is not to say that similes do not have their place. For instance, you may need an extra beat to make the sentence sound right, and in dialog word choice considerations are different. But in narration it is generally better to stick with metaphors if at all possible. If you are going to go out of your way to make a comparison, own it. Accept the whole deal without qualifiers and trust your reader to sort out the complications. If you cannot do this, it is probably best to pick a different comparison or figurative device altogether.
First rule of metaphor: you are going from the familiar to the unfamiliar. The more bombastic your metaphor, the more likely it is that you need to reconsider your wording. Second: your metaphor needs a bit on the surface and a lot underneath. If there's nothing on the surface, we have to slow down to decode everything, which is a drag, but if there is nothing to dig for, you might as well just spit it out plain-like. Three: avoid unneeded similes. You have a clean, efficient metaphor already, and it is much stronger besides. And four, very important, four: don't stoop to daggers. I hate daggers. The way they're spread about everywhere, you'd think the entire population is part of the Black Hand or something. For the love of Pete, find something else.
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True literary genius right there.
There's also stuff to be said about the use of sillier or more over the top metaphors/similes for comedy's sake, especially when it comes to the narrator. A fic where Pinkie is the PoV might have a lot of nonsensical metaphors that trail off or end up meaning the complete opposite of what was intended.
Isn't this a simile?
I think there may be one reason to use a simile instead of a metaphor: to highlight just what aspect of the thing being compared you want to call out.
Say, "daggers of icy cold stabbed at them", and people get an impression, but if you want to highlight a specific characteristic, don't you pretty much have to say: "The cold stabbed at them, friendly as a dagger of ice"? Like and as seem useful for more complex comparisons, although I do agree that in order to keep things impactful, stuff like this should be pared down.
One should keep in mind that some metaphors used in written works are common idioms. In those cases the author is using a turn of phrase that they(and most people they deal with) are familiar with. Biting cold, cold as ice and sharp pain(this last one is accepted by doctors when you describe the type of pain you are experiencing, along with burning pain, etc.)
Readers unfamiliar with the idiom are likely going to be lost or off put(which they can confused the idiomatic phrase with poor metaphor choice)... Turning a common idiom into a more obtuse metaphor for dramatization is (usually) poor writing though.
2586998
Metaphors that are idioms are still metaphors. They are simply commonly used metaphors. The problem being that when they are commonly used, they become easily added noise that fail to add sufficient value to justify their inclusion.
2586595
Never claimed it wasn't, nor did I claim it was a good figurative language
Not sure if it is just your examples using the Most Hated Thing of Comparison, or if I am missing something, but I cannot say I was getting much from either of those examples. The "cold" business is there explicitly, but as for stabbing? I've been Wisconsin Winter cold and still never come across any sharp piercing cold sensations. It looks to me like a stock phrase injected into the narrative so the author did not have to think about relating the actual sensation or its consequences to the characters/situation if any. I do agree, however, that more complex comparisons, especially when one is explicitly explaining a principle (Levitation is like...), could be appropriate times for a simile.
2585946
Good point. I really had not considered comedy while I was writing this, but that is a valid place for outrageous metaphor.
2587286 Agreed their over use is a problem, and detracts from the narrative of a story. I was just acknowledging trying to hard to find an appropriate alternative can make the prose, well more purple. And that regional or generational familiarity with an idiom can muddy the issue.
I found your blog post informative, one that should be taken as good advice. Just wanted to note a catch that can be easily overlooked by the intended audience.
2587305
Fair enough.
2587286 Eh, and now I'm not sure what I was thinking when I wrote it, but it might have been something like... similes allow for attaching more modifiers to either side of the comparison, so maybe things which are further apart in characteristics can be compared. But that's basically the same as saying 'more complex comparisons', so... yeah.
I've been shot at, does that count?
2592151
Well it certainly entitles you to the hugs
2593547
I'm going to follow you for your very informative blogs regarding writing. I may not be as "serious" about it as some writers on this site (it's merely a hobby for me), but it doesn't hurt to learn new things, even if I don't completely understand them.
2593670
Well, thank you kindly for that