# Metaphors and Similes



## EmmaSohan

The King of Lies got me starting thinking about similes and metaphors. Is there advice to give? Anything to talk about? I think so; I don't know how much.


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## Underd0g

I'm as clueless about the subject as a GPS that has to ask for directions.


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## EmmaSohan

The main advice I would give is just to put a lot of work and thought into your analogies. I think some authors don't, and it makes their book seem less serious.



> The gym was blacker than the inside of a cave.



We know the lights are out. "The gym was still blacker than" tells us the gym is black. The metaphor wasn't need for that. What does the metaphor add? When I was inside a cave, it was well lit. So this metaphor doesn't easily work for me.There was one moment where they turned out the lights and it was completely black, but nothing can be blacker than that.

(Yes, I have probably thought more about this metaphor than the author did. I am not supposed to feel that way.)

Of course, you might wonder, just because the power went out, aren't the exit lights still on? They were! So the author didn't even take her metaphor seriously.

Of course an adrenaline rush can be described as a "flood" of adrenaline. But what about adrenaline leaving her body? Is there a good simile for that? From the same paragraph:



> The adrenaline that had gotten me this far seemed to flow out of my body like a 100-year flood.



Oops, going the wrong direction on that simile. I can't figure out how adrenaline draining is like a flood. On the same page:



> It [the glowing exit sign] seemed like it was a hundred miles away, even though it was only yards.



I don't know what this means. It could have meaning if she could only crawl slowly, but our adrenaline-less heroine was racing to the sign and "managed to leap over a pile of ski poles without slowing."

It makes me think of adverbs -- they can add power to writing, but they have to be used thoughtfully.


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## bdcharles

I would say use each fairly sparingly for best impact, and when you do use them, make them pertinent - to content, context, tone, mood, character doing the perceiving etc. Try also to mix metaphors near a simile, so you don't end up with a string of _like_s and _as though_s. Eg if you have, let's say, a fairly sensitive, thoughtful character, their similes and analogies may differ from someone who is more bold, for example:



> Gentle Steve stepped into the cave mouth, a blind, fluttering moth. He flapped one pale hand in front of him but could see nothing. The blackness was as impentrable as velvet.



or



> Vicious Tyra strode forth into the cave mouth, a warrior-stab to the dark within. She flapped one broad hand before her, though she could see nothing. The blackness was impentrable as a fortress.



Note also the other word choices - description of the hand, the modifier to their names; even the choice of _but_ versus _though _feeds into the sense of character. Though is more decisive, whereas but is more taken-by-surprise, imo. But all these things - choices of words, choices of imagery, should work together to create the picture you want.


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## Darren White

On the Poetry Discussion Board you can find all sorts of interesting material about this (poets seemingly talk about nothing else). Read for instance the threads by RHPeat, here is one example.


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## luckyscars

I tend to think of metaphors as being the simile's grown up older brother. Similes are really, really easy. Even a five year old knows how to say "This water is cold like melted ice cream" and, frankly, is there a better simile than that for the purposes of creating a watertight, intellectually correct comparison? We have all been in cold water and it DOES feel like melted ice cream.

But it's difficult to impress anybody with a simile, and a simile that does not impress is practically worthless and a good indication of amateur rubbish. I still use them, but where possible I prefer to use metaphors. I tend to believe anything that offers an image in the language of comparison - "like" or "as"  etc- tends to be weaker.

Here is a pretty effective example, from "The Highwayman" by Noyes:

*"The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees. The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas."  
*
^ this is a good metaphor. Powerful and everybody can instantly _see _the moon and _feel _the wind. But written in the language of simile it is emasculate. 

*"The wind was like a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees. The moon resembled a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas."  

*It's not just the interruption of rhythm/ congestion of language of that ruins the second version, though that is definitely part of it, but mostly for me it is the instant separation that adding "was" or "resembles" creates. Suddenly this is becoming a matter of comparison, of imitation, of bringing home the fact that of course the moon ISN'T a ghost galleon, which of course the reader already knows. I find that to be weaker writing. A destruction of the suspension of disbelief.



EmmaSohan said:


> The main advice I would give is just to put a lot of work and thought into your analogies. I think some authors don't, and it makes their book seem less serious.
> 
> We know the lights are out. "The gym was still blacker than" tells us the gym is black. The metaphor wasn't need for that. What does the metaphor add? When I was inside a cave, it was well lit. So this metaphor doesn't easily work for me.There was one moment where they turned out the lights and it was completely black, but nothing can be blacker than that.
> 
> (Yes, I have probably thought more about this metaphor than the author did. I am not supposed to feel that way.)
> 
> Of course, you might wonder, just because the power went out, aren't the exit lights still on? They were! So the author didn't even take her metaphor seriously.



Personally I put close to zero thought into metaphors or similes. I tend to think the less thought that is put into these things yields better results. I realize that sounds deeply counter intuitive but consider what we are doing when we use this sort of language. A metaphor is supposed to yield an *instant *image and in order for something to be instantly evocative it usually needs to command instant construction. Imagery should NOT be an intellectual process but a visceral, instinctual one.  I do not know how Noyes came up with the "moon metaphor" but I highly doubt he sat there for any extended length of time and thought about all the things a moon could look like. Rather I suspect he closed his eyes and pictured a moon (or possibly opened them and looked at a real one) and immediately the thought came into his head "it's like a ship!". That is essentially how I come up with mine and if I cannot come up with a good one, I don't try. A writer gets no real brownie points for metaphors and similes UNLESS they are visceral and unique and a surplus of middling attempts at MAKING! WRITING! FIZZ! is a huge red annoyance for me as a reader.

But let's see...



> Of course an adrenaline rush can be described as a "flood" of adrenaline. But what about adrenaline leaving her body? Is there a good simile for that?



Now, not to nitpick but "flood of adrenaline" is actually a metaphor not a simile as it involves no comparison. Still for the sake of experimentation let's consider how this might work both as a simile AND metaphor. It is important to point out when I consider this I am thinking not of adrenaline itself but of a highly pressured substance being swiftly hemorrhaged. Which is what that sensation is, on a psychological level

So I sit here, I think for a moment...

*"a sigh of adrenaline leaving"
**"adrenaline bled from her body"
"adrenaline was sucked away as air from the neck of a filled balloon"
"adrenaline was sucked away as suddenly as air from the inside of a plane thirty thousand feet in the air, its windows blown."
" the rush of adrenaline began to dwindle, becoming like **blood sucked into the jaws of a leech."
* 
None of these strike me as being particularly good, but there's nothing at all _bad_ about them. They fit the brief and are evocative so far as they do describe, for me, the sensation we are speaking of. But they don't tell me anything about the sensation I don't already get from saying "the adrenaline left". But here's the thing, I do not feel contemplating it for long would have come up with anything better. 

It's not hard to write this stuff. You just have to be lucky sometimes and be able to separate the good from the bad. Not all aspects of writing needs to require hard work and hand wringing. Some of it is, for better or worse, purely instinctual and requiring of a certain degree of luck. One must seize on the good when it arrives. I doubt Noyes could write such a good metaphor about a sunny day.


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## Kyle R

bdcharles said:


> I would say use each fairly sparingly for best impact, and when you do use them, make them pertinent - to content, context, tone, mood, character doing the perceiving etc. Try also to mix metaphors near a simile, so you don't end up with a string of _like_s and _as though_s. Eg if you have, let's say, a fairly sensitive, thoughtful character, their similes and analogies may differ from someone who is more bold ...



I agree completely. Character, especially, can (and often should) be the deciding factor in the kinds of similes and metaphors that are used. The deeper the POV, the more important this becomes.

If you're truly entrenched in the character's skin (first person, or deep third), the comparisons and analogies used should be only something that the character himself/herself would think or say.

Even if the POV isn't close to the character's headspace, it would still make a lot of sense for the comparisons to be character-related. The analogies used in a story involving an artist, for example, should read a lot differently than those used in a story involving a boxer.

Just as long as you keep them fresh, and don't rely on stereotypes or clichés. :encouragement:


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## bdcharles

I would also say don't forget that all the usual things you do in your writing should be present in the simile. So for example, in varying levels of absurdity:

She danced before his eyes like a whirly spinny thing; boingy-boing-boing, all the way up.

She danced before his eyes like a seed floater on gentle drafts.

She danced before his eyes like a twirling particle of pollen, whispered aloft on only the softest carresses of summer air.

So for every style the simile should match it. Bolting them on willy-nilly would probably look a bit out of place.


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## EmmaSohan

I should have asked why write a metaphor or simile. We don't need a metaphor to help describe black. Or the moon, plus the moon isn't really tossed about. I think the author I cited was using metaphors just to insert excitement. So the Exit sign was described as the Holy Grail, an exciting metaphor that doesn't fit the Exit sign very well.

Writing metaphors and similes must deserve some time and effort. I can't help but think this author didn't put enough time in.



> He was being torn in two, torn to shreds.



Those are contradictory. Plus the same paragraph said his heart was broken.


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## bdcharles

EmmaSohan said:


> I should have asked why write a metaphor or simile. We don't need a metaphor to help describe black. Or the moon, plus the moon isn't really tossed about. I think the author I cited was using metaphors just to insert excitement. So the Exit sign was described as the Holy Grail, an exciting metaphor that doesn't fit the Exit sign very well.



That's exactly it. It's one thing to enumerate just what is there, be in a dark cave or an exit sign, it's quite another to imbue it with tone, voice, meaning, tension and so on. Such imagery, being a part of writing, can help wth that


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## Olly Buckle

It strikes me it depends what you are writing, it is all very well being imaginative and original, but there are occasions when that is going to distract the reader from the point and the well worn cliché can be more appropriate.


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## JustRob

luckyscars said:


> I tend to think of metaphors as being the simile's grown up older brother. Similes are really, really easy. Even a five year old knows how to say "This water is cold like melted ice cream" and, frankly, is there a better simile than that for the purposes of creating a watertight, intellectually correct comparison? We have all been in cold water and it DOES feel like melted ice cream.
> 
> But it's difficult to impress anybody with a simile, and a simile that does not impress is practically worthless and a good indication of amateur rubbish. I still use them, but where possible I prefer to use metaphors. I tend to believe anything that offers an image in the language of comparison - "like" or "as"  etc- tends to be weaker.



Maybe it depends how creatively the similes are used. I've never thought of these lyrics below as weak.



> [SIZE=+1]The Windmills of Your Mind[/SIZE]
> 
> Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
> Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
> Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
> Like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon
> Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
> And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
> Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind
> 
> ...


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## Jack of all trades

EmmaSohan said:


> The main advice I would give is just to put a lot of work and thought into your analogies. I think some authors don't, and it makes their book seem less serious.
> 
> 
> 
> We know the lights are out. "The gym was still blacker than" tells us the gym is black. The metaphor wasn't need for that. What does the metaphor add? When I was inside a cave, it was well lit. So this metaphor doesn't easily work for me.There was one moment where they turned out the lights and it was completely black, but nothing can be blacker than that.
> 
> (Yes, I have probably thought more about this metaphor than the author did. I am not supposed to feel that way.)
> 
> Of course, you might wonder, just because the power went out, aren't the exit lights still on? They were! So the author didn't even take her metaphor seriously.
> 
> Of course an adrenaline rush can be described as a "flood" of adrenaline. But what about adrenaline leaving her body? Is there a good simile for that? From the same paragraph:
> 
> 
> 
> Oops, going the wrong direction on that simile. I can't figure out how adrenaline draining is like a flood. On the same page:
> 
> 
> 
> I don't know what this means. It could have meaning if she could only crawl slowly, but our adrenaline-less heroine was racing to the sign and "managed to leap over a pile of ski poles without slowing."
> 
> It makes me think of adverbs -- they can add power to writing, but they have to be used thoughtfully.




It seems to me, assuming the quotes were all in the same order as in the book. the girl had adrenaline, and so could jump the ski poles. Then, for reasons that defy biology, she "ran out" of the enhancing hormone, and the distance to the door therefore seemed longer than it actually was.


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## luckyscars

Olly Buckle said:


> It strikes me it depends what you are writing, it is all very well being imaginative and original, but there are occasions when that is going to distract the reader from the point and the well worn cliché can be more appropriate.



With regard to similes and metaphors can you provide an example of a cliche that is effective? The only times I can think of that would be the case is in dialogue and I think that was covered on another thread (probably a lot of them)



JustRob said:


> Maybe it depends how creatively the similes are used. I've never thought of these lyrics below as weak.



Fair point. I used a poetry example myself but I think this would be a good time to draw a line between how similes and metaphors work in verse compared to prose.

Those lyrics work, yes, but it is not on the strength of the similes themselves to create a defined image to assist in the reader's understanding of the piece, which I believe is what Emma Sohan was speaking of. 

I have no idea from the excerpt you posted what those similes are exactly describing (do you?) and I don't think they are there to hold specific meanings or make the intent more obvious, quite the opposite. A lot of poetry uses repetitive similes as part of creating a rhythm. An example that springs to mind immediately is Bob Dylan's refrain "_Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone_". 

I could literally add my own surreal line to the lyrics you quoted, say "Like a doughnut eating breakfast, like a bucket eating toast" and provided it was zany enough probably nobody would mind. For me the constant use of "Like a" works as a kind of reader-hypnosis. It's not there to describe a scene as it would be in a story.


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## Terry D

Similes and metaphors can be very effective writing tools to try and convey the image in the author's mind to the reader. If you can't come up with an image that fits your vision _perfectly_, then don't settle for something less. What happens too often is writers try to be overly creative in their use and end up with phrases that are cumbersome, clumsy, or, worst of all, silly. None of Emma's examples were, IMO, very good. The authors were trying too hard to be creative and ended up painting their phrases bright orange and slapping on a sticker which screamed, in bold print, "Hey, look at me!" Similes and metaphors should flow smoothly and should be appropriate to the situation (adrenaline doesn't flow out of a person's bloodstream, it dissipates and metabolizes, so there is no simile for flowing which really fits). 

_The adrenaline which had carried Karn through the fight dissipated from his blood now like a morning fog, leaving him weak and trembling._


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## luckyscars

Terry D said:


> If you can't come up with an image that fits your vision _perfectly_, then don't settle for something less.



I think this is probably the biggest take-away.

 If I had a penny for every story where the writer has dumped a smorgasbord of imagery I would have enough cash to pay off ten adult entertainers AND buy an ostrich jacket. Most people know what most normal things look like. You don't get commission for telling me the sunset looked like sorbet or the sun was hot as a fart. I _know_ what a sunset looks like and I _know_ what the sun feels like. If it's not important enough to demand it or beautiful enough to deserve it, leave it alone.


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## JustRob

luckyscars said:


> Those lyrics work, yes, but it is not on the strength of the similes themselves to create a defined image to assist in the reader's understanding of the piece, which I believe is what Emma Sohan was speaking of.
> 
> I have no idea from the excerpt you posted what those similes are exactly describing (do you?) and I don't think they are there to hold specific meanings or make the intent more obvious, quite the opposite.



Apparently they were originally written to depict conscious flow, particularly the sort that stops a person falling asleep at night, so yes, I am well enough acquainted with the phenomenon to recognise this description of it. In fact I have often described my mind as being a fruit machine as even when I am fully awake I am showered in a tumbling torrent of thoughts and have to make some sort of sense out of them. When I think about something my brain is about as effective as Google as a search engine. I just Googled "ferret" and it replied that it had found thirty thousand references in 0.48 seconds. Yep, my brain is just about as useful as that.

The wheels and circles are most likely references to circular logic which creates insoluble paradoxes until other elements are added. The brain runs around these circles seeking a way out of them, (which may be why I thought "ferret" earlier. Interesting.) especially when one is trying to sleep. Evidently it even does it while one _is_ asleep, so the solution is quite likely to materialise as one wakes up. Writers are familiar with this phenomenon of waking inspiration.

The song _Windmills of Your Mind_ was used in the film _The Thomas Crown Affair_ and also in the later remake of it. In the rewrite of my novel, if that ever materialises from my mental windmill, a boy and girl who may be forming a relationship decide to watch a film and she chooses _The Thomas Crown Affair_, so he pointedly asks her which version, the one where the couple separate at the end or the one where they come together. She replies that it doesn't matter because they both have _that_ song in them. In other words, she can't decide whether to continue their relationship or not, her mind being in a turmoil over it.

Well, you did ask.


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## luckyscars

JustRob said:


> Apparently they were originally written to depict conscious flow, particularly the sort that stops a person falling asleep at night, so yes, I am well enough acquainted with the phenomenon to recognise this description of it. In fact I have often described my mind as being a fruit machine as even when I am fully awake I am showered in a tumbling torrent of thoughts and have to make some sort of sense out of them. When I think about something my brain is about as effective as Google as a search engine. I just Googled "ferret" and it replied that it had found thirty thousand references in 0.48 seconds. Yep, my brain is just about as useful as that.
> 
> The wheels and circles are most likely references to circular logic which creates insoluble paradoxes until other elements are added. The brain runs around these circles seeking a way out of them, (which may be why I thought "ferret" earlier. Interesting.) especially when one is trying to sleep. Evidently it even does it while one _is_ asleep, so the solution is quite likely to materialise as one wakes up. Writers are familiar with this phenomenon of waking inspiration.
> 
> The song _Windmills of Your Mind_ was used in the film _The Thomas Crown Affair_ and also in the later remake of it. In the rewrite of my novel, if that ever materialises from my mental windmill, a boy and girl who may be forming a relationship decide to watch a film and she chooses _The Thomas Crown Affair_, so he pointedly asks her which version, the one where the couple separate at the end or the one where they come together. She replies that it doesn't matter because they both have _that_ song in them. In other words, she can't decide whether to continue their relationship or not, her mind being in a turmoil over it.
> 
> Well, you did ask.



Don't want to get too brain-in-a-vat, but it strikes me that similes and metaphors perhaps serve a fundamentally different purpose when used to portray things like "conscious flow" than they do when used to portray, say, a dark room or a tall building or a hot day.

One man's conscious flow is another man's nonsense sandwich, right? There's little chance that what depicts _your _mental process accurately or powerfully depicts _mine _because your consciousness does not exist to anybody except you. Whereas we all know what a dark room is with more or less identical precision. So, the standards used to weigh the functionality of a simile that exists to express a cognitive function must be different to those used to describe observable things.

Certainly you can explain the imagery used in the poem you cited. And, when you do, I can certainly understand that meaning and appreciate it. But none of that has anything to do with the success of failure of the imagery because good imagery is not supposed to need explained, is it? The moment it does it has surely failed in its purpose...


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## ppsage

> One man's conscious flow is another man's nonsense sandwich, right?


Nice metaphor!


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## JustRob

luckyscars said:


> One man's conscious flow is another man's nonsense sandwich, right?



So this other man can actually digest the bread and butter of it if not the subtler contents?



ppsage said:


> Nice metaphor!



Yes it does have impact, but actually I think it's more a comparison than a metaphor as a sandwich is merely a layering of components and doesn't necessarily refer to food, which is only an ambiguity in the choice of words, so there is no essential unreality involved. In my remark above I took the statement to mean that the other man's perception was of a small amount of nonsense enclosed within a large amount of sense, the "bread and butter" to use a commonly used term. Also it is a reference to the viewpoints of two different people, which isn't the normal form of a metaphor. "Stage left is house right" is not a metaphor but merely an indication of different viewpoints, again with no unrealistic component. "One man's magic is another man's science," is also not a metaphor but a statement of fact.



luckyscars said:


> There's little chance that what depicts _your _mental process accurately or powerfully depicts _mine _because your consciousness does not exist to anybody except you.



As I didn't write the lyrics I _am_ the other man digesting that sandwich, which proves that those similes do in fact represent commonly held views among a group of people and resonate with them. The fact that you may not be one of that group and don't feel that resonance doesn't invalidate them. I always return to my point about having a clear idea of your target readership. True a good simile or metaphor may be one that is understood by the most people but I think there could be a perpetual debate about whether the best writing is that which has the most impact on the most people. 

I think the essential resonance is more a result of the underlying idea than whether it is presented as a simile or metaphor. In that song the metaphor was "Windmills of Your Mind" where the windmills were a metaphor for turmoil and the similes provided examples of that turmoil. Yes, such turmoil in the brain literally _is_ a sandwich of sense and nonsense, so you did actually get the meaning without realising it. You just expressed it very succinctly and effectively, so in fact we agree, don't we?

I just wonder whether "Sandwiches of Your Mind" would have been any better as a title though. That doesn't present the essential cyclic movement of thoughts in the same way, not unless the filling happens to be doner kebab, which may also have incomprehensible ingredients. Sorry -- conscious flow at work.

By the way, the mechanism of the time machine in my novel consisted of a large array of silicon sandwiches enveloping an entire building. Funny coincidence.


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## luckyscars

JustRob said:


> As I didn't write the lyrics I _am_ the other man digesting that sandwich, which proves that those similes do in fact represent commonly held views among a group of people and resonate with them. The fact that you may not be one of that group and don't feel that resonance doesn't invalidate them. I always return to my point about having a clear idea of your target readership. True a good simile or metaphor may be one that is understood by the most people but I think there could be a perpetual debate about whether the best writing is that which has the most impact on the most people.



The problem is you presented it as evidence to back up a claim. That means it had to persuade the one whom you are addressing in discussion, which at the risk of being an ego maniac I believe in this case is me...  

I promise wholeheartedly I am not being deliberately obtuse when I tell you I don't find a simile like "Like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon" to have a clear meaning. More crucially still, I can back up that claim by pointing to all sorts of things that such a line isolated could just as easily be describing. Flow of consciousness, sure, but it is quite far down the list.

Of course you will, rightly, point out that context shapes meaning. Absolutely right, however I am not pointing to just that line but all of them. The whole song, actually, is (wonderfully) nebulous. The only way they make sense is if we are told what the song is about. Which, in actual fact, we are essentially told. The song is titled "Windmills *of your mind*". It is not titled "Windmills" or anything that does not inform the reader/listener as to what these images _mean. _That is a fairly clear signal, I think, that the writer knew his meaning was unclear.

You would be hard pressed to come up with any literary motif in the English language that didn't make sense to somebody, but that doesn't mean it is a good one. I also want to make it very clear I am NOT saying those lines are not good writing. They are. It's just that I think there's a difference between good imagery and good wordplay.



> Imagery, in a literary text, is an author's use of vivid and descriptive language to add depth to their work.






> A simile is a





> figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid




My interpretation of the above definitions is that the purpose of imagery is to add clarity to the reader's visualization of a scene.  The word that sticks out to me, though, is "vivid". The word features in both the definition of imagery and the specific one of simile. It might be in that word that is responsible for our difference of opinion. We both know what is "vivid" in a poem about consciousness is always going to be wildly different than what is "vivid" in a prose story. This is why I said we really need to differentiate between the kind of imagery that is suited for prose and poetry because, of course, poetry uses a different form of scene. It is not telling a story as a novel or short story is. For that reason I think harping on about some song lyrics on a subforum that is for prose only is a bit pointless. 

However if your claim is that the images presented in Windmills Of The Mind would prospectively make for great similes in a prose fiction context, we are going to need to politely agree to disagree. Perhaps it makes me a jolly awful square, but the kind of story that would employ a line like "the world is like an apple whirling silently in space" is not really one I can imagine being much good. Perhaps in dialogue or an absurdist monologue or as song lyrics as you mention it is in your novel, that's fine. I could certainly see two characters listening to the song and it taking significance in that context. Or maybe a fourteen year old saying something like that following his first ever hit of ecstasy or whatever it might be. But its just not a simile that seems to work as part of a functioning narrative. Not least because the world does not resemble an apple in any obvious way and I am afraid I cannot for the life of me begin to imagine the significance of fruit in space...


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## Olly Buckle

Slight digression. I am reading 'This is going to hurt' by Adam Kay, a good read. To quote a simile of his,

'The population is getting fatter faster than a mobility scooter hurtling towards Greggs at closing time'

'Greggs' might be a problem for the non British, they are the high street chain that sell pies and doughnuts, but that really had it as far as I am concerned, unexpected, amusing, commonplace, and relevant all at the same time


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## JustRob

luckyscars said:


> This is why I said we really need to differentiate between the kind of imagery that is suited for prose and poetry because, of course, poetry uses a different form of scene. It is not telling a story as a novel or short story is. For that reason I think harping on about some song lyrics on a subforum that is for prose only is a bit pointless.



I don't think that we should hog the thread, but admit that I can  make no distinction between poetry and prose because I seldom write  poetry and have more than once claimed that my prose _is_ my  poetry, so maybe it tends to contain imagery more suited to poetry by  convention. Perhaps my writing just falls into some nondescript gap  between the two.



luckyscars said:


> However if your claim is that the images presented in Windmills Of The Mind would prospectively make for great similes in a prose fiction context, we are going to need to politely agree to disagree. Perhaps it makes me a jolly awful square, but the kind of story that would employ a line like "the world is like an apple whirling silently in space" is not really one I can imagine being much good. Perhaps in dialogue or an absurdist monologue or as song lyrics as you mention it is in your novel, that's fine.



I suspect that as a beta reader of my full novel you wouldn't make it to the later chapter where a young man finds the many events and characters previously described in the story spinning around in his head along with memories of the works of Shakespeare and the poetry of William Blake as he is making the very simple decision whether to take a girl that he has met only moments before in his arms and kiss her. Yes, his mind is whirling like a carousel and later he finds out that her name is Lucine, one meaning of which is "moonlight". That was just a coincidence that prompted me to work that song into the rewrite as an afterthought. As for the "love at first sight" scene, they do say that we should write about what we know and that is very much what happened when I first met my angel almost half a century ago. Poetry or prose? Metaphor or simile? No, reality as fiction.


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## Olly Buckle

Lucky scars, I don't think what Rob quotes you as saying above is right, it would be true of some sorts of poetry and some sorts of prose, but unless you are going to say 'But they are not real poems', or 'That is not a real short story'. I am pretty sure I have read a few 'short stories' that did not 'tell a story', they don't appeal to me much, but some people love the open-endedness of it. And we poke fun at Hallmark card poetry, but it sells, which very little poetry does, and I have heard people in card shops say 'Listen to this Mum, it's beautiful'. It is a , to me, quite unlovely ditty telling a simple story. From another perspective Dylan Thomas wrote some prose that sounds like poetry. 


I would say that sweeping statements always stop me, but that is a bit of a sweeping statement, lets say I try not to accept them when I recognise them.


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## luckyscars

Olly Buckle said:


> Lucky scars, I don't think what Rob quotes you as saying above is right, it would be true of some sorts of poetry and some sorts of prose, but unless you are going to say 'But they are not real poems', or 'That is not a real short story'. I am pretty sure I have read a few 'short stories' that did not 'tell a story', they don't appeal to me much, but some people love the open-endedness of it. And we poke fun at Hallmark card poetry, but it sells, which very little poetry does, and I have heard people in card shops say 'Listen to this Mum, it's beautiful'. It is a , to me, quite unlovely ditty telling a simple story. From another perspective Dylan Thomas wrote some prose that sounds like poetry.
> 
> 
> I would say that sweeping statements always stop me, but that is a bit of a sweeping statement, lets say I try not to accept them when I recognise them.



There is a spectrum between poetry and prose for sure, Olly, perhaps best exhibited by the oddball genre of "Prose Poetry". In fact, looking a Prose Poetry might be a good way to unearth the similarities and also the discrepancies of which I am talking between the two realms.

 Below is an example of a prose poem entitled "Bath" by Amy Lowell:



> The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air. The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light. Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot and the planes of light in the water jar.



^ The imagery in this while poetic is definitely prose-friendly. I could see it in the beginning of a novel. "Cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel" is a simple yet solid simile that I think can make sense to just about anybody. So I am happy enough with that.

Contrast it, though, with this. Another Prose Poem titled "Kill Bugs Dead" by Harryette Mullen.



> Kills bugs dead. Redundancy is syntactical overkill. A pin-prick of peace at the end of the tunnel of a nightmare night in a roach motel. Their noise infects the dream. In black kitchens they foul the food, walk on our bodies as we sleep over oceans of pirate flags. Skull and crossbones, they crunch like candy.



I do like the above as writing, but I do not like it as _imagery_. I don't like it as imagery simply because there's no concrete meaning that I believe a substantial number of people, never mind a majority, could derive a clear meaning of. This is what I am saying about the problem of comparing poetry metaphors to ones used in prose. "A pin-prick of peace at the end of the tunnel of a nightmare night in a roach motel" is undoubtedly a good, lyrical line that could be evocative of a _state of mind _and is therefore tailor made for poetry. Certainly it is powerful in "Kills Bugs Dead". But it does not describe anything close to an image, at least not clearly. 

As mentioned, I don't think we can talk about image in the context of mental processes. I don't share yours and you don't share mine: I have NO idea what the "imagery" in Kills Bugs Dead is describing (nor would I Windmills of Mind) if I did not already have it explained by other means and while i could enjoy guessing there is a good chance my interpretation of the image has a good chance of not being what the writer intended. So again, I think we just can't talk about such motifs in the concept of imagery.

But let's play devil's advocate on it. If this line about a _pin prick of peace _did occurr in prose it would no doubt be intentionally abstract, a detour into the poetic conceit. Which, of course, is absolutely fine and in high-end literature often happens (dream scenes spring to mind...) but I can't entertain it as something that would help to better explain what was going on and what it looked/sounded/smelled/tasted like, which is what I interpret the definition of prose imagery as being for. 



> Bob walked into the shabby room, dazed. There he picked up his coffee and drank it, continuing to drink until he found *a pin-prick of peace at the end of the tunnel of a nightmare night in a roach motel*.



^This does not work for me as a functional metaphor. It might work for some. I concede that gross generalizations are generally grotesque and my opinion on this is just an opinion. Carry on.


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## luckyscars

But on a lighter note...

https://dysonology.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/56-bestworst-similes-used-in-high-school-exams/


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## JustRob

luckyscars said:


> But on a lighter note...
> 
> https://dysonology.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/56-bestworst-similes-used-in-high-school-exams/



They are brilliant. Number 14 should have been included in that controversial song and I particularly like the inversion in number 45. Number 48 reminds me of how I scraped up a pass in my German exam at school by using German syntax with English words made to sound German because I couldn't remember any of the vocabulary. Number 56 is certainly a truly original way to describe a sunset, which must be the holy grail of creative writing.

Thanks for the entertaining link.


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## Bloggsworth

My advice is "Don't try too hard" with either, they are best used with subtlty, don't drive them in like a six-inch nail:

Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood

To begin at the beginning:

_It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible black..._


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## EmmaSohan

1. My melancholy was like a ripening fruit. (simile)
2. My melancholy was a ripening fruit. (metaphor)
3. My melancholy ripened.

Which do you like? #3 is from The King of Lies; I like the author's choice.

I don't know what to call #3; I have made up my own word, and others call it a metaphor. Since melancholy cannot literally ripen, the reader is forced to think metaphorically. As far as I know, the "impossible word" can be a verb, noun, adverb, adjective, and maybe even a preposition. Personification would be one small part of this type of metaphor (or whatever you want to call it.)

In looking at books this week, I have been surprised at how much good writers of metaphors and similes don't follow the classic form. Isn't "nothing sandwich" in this category? It again forces us to think metaphorically.


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## Kyle R

EmmaSohan said:


> 1. My melancholy was like a ripening fruit. (simile)
> 2. My melancholy was a ripening fruit. (metaphor)
> 3. My melancholy ripened.
> 
> Which do you like? #3 is from The King of Lies; I like the author's choice.
> 
> I don't know what to call #3; I have made up my own word, and others call it a metaphor. Since melancholy cannot literally ripen, the reader is forced to think metaphorically.



I prefer #3 as well. Crisp and to the point.

Though I do believe that a feeling can actual "ripen" in a literal sense of the word (as ripen also means: to develop and/or mature to an improved state). :encouragement:


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## EmmaSohan

There has been a lot of good advice here about writing metaphors/similes. One is just to try. Have high standards. It's pretty obvious how much an author tries (and what the author is trying to do).

I agree with the advice that metaphor is stronger. Of course, if the reader might understand the metaphor as literally true, then a simile is needed.

I think you can get freshness using modern words and concepts.


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## EmmaSohan

Kyle R said:


> I prefer #3 as well. Crisp and to the point.
> 
> Though I do believe that a feeling can actual "ripen" in a literal sense of the word (as ripen also means: to develop and/or mature to an improved state). :encouragement:



If you say Bill is like a giraffe, you do not mean he has a heart or lungs (or muscles, DNA, cells, volume, weight). You probably mean he is tall with a long neck. So, giraffe has a metaphorical meaning. That metaphorical meaning is the distinctive feature (or features).

So, "black hole" was a well defined, concrete term in physics when it was first coined. But it cannot help but have a metaphorical definitionm and it in a sense always had that metaphorical definition. I am not sure at what point that metaphorical definition gets added to dictionaries. Or, I recently used "expiration date" metaphorically. Even if you have never heard that used metaphorically, you can probably guess closely enough at a meaning.


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## Olly Buckle

I guess anything can have a metaphorical use, I can imagine saying to someone "That is a truly 'EmmaSohan' comment." about something they, not Emma, had said. Guess that's a bit of an 'Olly' sort of comment.


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## luckyscars

EmmaSohan said:


> 1. My melancholy was like a ripening fruit. (simile)
> 2. My melancholy was a ripening fruit. (metaphor)
> 3. My melancholy ripened.
> 
> Which do you like? #3 is from The King of Lies; I like the author's choice.
> 
> I don't know what to call #3; I have made up my own word, and others call it a metaphor. Since melancholy cannot literally ripen, the reader is forced to think metaphorically. As far as I know, the "impossible word" can be a verb, noun, adverb, adjective, and maybe even a preposition. Personification would be one small part of this type of metaphor (or whatever you want to call it.)
> 
> In looking at books this week, I have been surprised at how much good writers of metaphors and similes don't follow the classic form. Isn't "nothing sandwich" in this category? It again forces us to think metaphorically.



I like either option two or three depending on the general flow of the work. It isn't just fruit that ripens, so they're not exactly the same in meaning.


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## Olly Buckle

There are always other possibilities,

A ripening fruit, my melancholy hung
or
Like a ripening fruit my melancholy hung 
or 
A ripening fruit of melancholy, hanging, waiting to fall


There are always more possibilities to be found.


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## EmmaSohan

Darren White said:


> On the Poetry Discussion Board you can find all sorts of interesting material about this (poets seemingly talk about nothing else). Read for instance the threads by RHPeat, here is one example.



Zeugma:
In Greek means "Yoking" and applies to the use of a single word standing in the same grammatical relation to two other terms. A figure of speech in which one word, usually a verb, is used to modify two or more others, but making sense with only one, as in "the fragrance of flowers and the sky..."

Women whose hands were cold with jewels and thin blood.  (The King of Lies)

"Of course, honey. I'm sorry. Good Evening." I could feel her as she stepped closer, a mixture of perfume and disdain that fell around me like ashes.  (The King of Lies)

I was going to call this metaphor by conjunction, but apparently the Ancient Greeks were first.

Have you used this? I don't think I have.

 Could you? I will challenge people to use this. Today I got a feeling it might be not be impossible.


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## EmmaSohan

EmmaSohan said:


> I will challenge people to use this [Zeugma]. Today I got a feeling it might be not be impossible.



I apologize for that challenge. I went through a few of my short stories, looking for places where I could add Zeugma. I didn't find _any_. Worse, the challenge was ambiguous -- definitions on the internet can make Zeugma just goofy.

No I don't. I added a few really good metaphor/similes to my stories, so the effort was very worthwhile for me. Maybe I just never tried enough before; maybe I didn't know the possibilities; for sure I was working on short stories that absorbed metaphor/simile better than my previous stories. (Like John Hart's books, mood was really important.)

And I found a few Zeugmas I had already written, if was willing to be generous in the definition -- they were putting items in a group to say something about the last item. It's just a matter of recognizing them:



> I came, I saw, I conquered.



Think of that as a simile. If you wanted to be obvious (which actually doesn't seem that common in modern writing), it would be: "My conquering was as casual as my coming and looking around."


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## Olly Buckle

If you reach the position Caesar did nothing is done casually, Emma. 'My conquest is the inevitable result of my arriving and seeing'


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## EmmaSohan

Olly Buckle said:


> If you reach the position Caesar did nothing is done casually, Emma. 'My conquest is the inevitable result of my arriving and seeing'



Interesting! Allusion has to be the metaphorical most likely to fail, but maybe zeugma is second.

If he had just written "I conquered" by itself, we would have understood it literally, and our impression of what the conquest was like would be based on our knowledge of Caesar, conquests, the conquered country, and whatever.

If we don't take the whole phrase as zeugma, then it has the same meaning.

But most people apparently do take it as a zeugma and give an interpretation that goes beyond the literal meaning. From Wikipedia: "The phrase is used to refer to a swift, conclusive victory."

And I took it as bragging and showmanship.


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## EmmaSohan

"He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a piece of cake."

That's pretty close to being a typical example of a simile. It's extremely creative and vivid.

And overdone. I laughed. I expect that only in a parody of a detective novel.

There was a sudden silence as heavy as a waterlogged boat.
He had a battered face that looked as if it had been hit by everything but the bucket of a dragline.

Your impression of that may vary. That's Chandler, 1940, a Philip Marlowe story. For all I know he's the original that everyone else parodies.

Anyway, there are a variety of ways of being metaphorical. My sense is that modern, skilled authors would rather avoid the standard form, if there is a good alternative. They most certainly do not put their similes/metaphors in standard form just by reflex. A simple example:

Hundreds of voices were shouting over one another in the cafeteria, so that the conversation became mere sound, the rushing of a river over rocks. (Green, _Turtles all the Way Down_).


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## Olly Buckle

Chandler was really great at it, there was one where he had Marlow climbing a stair at night near the sea. "The hand rail was as damp and cold as a toad's belly". I may not have got it perfectly, I can't even remember which book it was, but the simile stuck. A metal handrail, at night with mist coming in from the sea, of course that was what it felt like !!


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## moderan

[*=left]"I walked back through the arch and started up the steps. It was a nice walk if you liked grunting. There were two hundred and eighty steps up to Cabrillo Street. They were drifted over with windblown sand and the handrail was as cold and wet as a toad's belly." -- Farewell, My Lovely


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## Olly Buckle

That was it, probably half a life time since I read it, but the simile stuck. Guess it did for you too


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## moderan

I know how to google.


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## EmmaSohan

No Google for me, I read that line last night from the book and it leapt off the page.

It gets back to why we write similes. Chandler wasn't trying to describe rails -- I understand metal rails, and I've never touched a toad. (The internet says that toads are dry, so I suspect Chandler hadn't either. Technically, he was saying the handrail was dry?) But obviously it had a lot of power.


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## Terry D

EmmaSohan said:


> No Google for me, I read that line last night from the book and it leapt off the page.
> 
> It gets back to why we write similes. Chandler wasn't trying to describe rails -- I understand metal rails, and I've never touched a toad. (The internet says that toads are dry, so I suspect Chandler hadn't either. Technically, he was saying the handrail was dry?) But obviously it had a lot of power.



Yes, he was describing the metal rail. What writers need to understand about using similes is _why_ he chose to describe a common metal handrail the way he did. If you don't understand that then you are likely doomed to using them poorly. Our job as writers is to create a world for our readers that they can immerse themselves in and one of the best ways to do that is to choose small details and present them in a way which creates verisimilitude, making our liar's world seem real. By choosing a common object -- the handrail -- and describing it in very tactile way Chandler instantly puts that handrail in the reader's hand. In this case the simile achieves another function, perhaps an even more important one, it helps to establish mood and tone. His choice of a toad's belly (which are often wet because of their habitat [cold, wet places]) paints a picture far different from that which would have been presented if he'd called the rail, "...as cold and wet as a puppy's nose."

The simile works precisely because the details chosen are common. Yes, everyone knows what a handrail is, and everyone knows what a toad is, we don't need Chandler describing them. But, because he juxtaposes these two common things, he grabs the reader and pulls him/her into the story.


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## moderan

EmmaSohan said:


> No Google for me, I read that line last night from the book and it leapt off the page.
> 
> It gets back to why we write similes. Chandler wasn't trying to describe rails -- I understand metal rails, and I've never touched a toad. (The internet says that toads are dry, so I suspect Chandler hadn't either. Technically, he was saying the handrail was dry?) But obviously it had a lot of power.



Ultracrepidarian. Consistently.
Chandler was trying to up the creepy factor. That's all. People think toads are creepy and slimy, and it doesn't matter that they're not.


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## EmmaSohan

The reader knows nothing about John:

John was as slow as a snail
The snail was as slow as John.

#1 is an example of using simile to describe John. #2 is not an example of describing snails. First, the reader presumably already knows how slow snails are (just as I already know what a cold wet railing feels like). Second, the reader doesn't know anything about John (just as I never touched a toad and you are ignoring the fact that almost everyone says a toad's skin is dry.)

So, Chandler did not mean to help us understand how a cold wet handrails feels. It looks like a description, but he must have known it really didn't help with that. Maybe he meant the handrail was as unpleasant as a toad's belly that is cold and wet. But of course it wasn't, that would be hyperbole.

From one website: Writers use similes to explain things, to express emotion, and to make their writing more vivid and entertaining.


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## Terry D

EmmaSohan said:


> The reader knows nothing about John:
> 
> John was as slow as a snail
> The snail was as slow as John.
> 
> #1 is an example of using simile to describe John. #2 is not an example of describing snails. First, the reader presumably already knows how slow snails are (just as I already know what a cold wet railing feels like). Second, the reader doesn't know anything about John (just as I never touched a toad and you are ignoring the fact that almost everyone says a toad's skin is dry.)
> 
> So, Chandler did not mean to help us understand how a cold wet handrails feels. It looks like a description, but he must have known it really didn't help with that. Maybe he meant the handrail was as unpleasant as a toad's belly that is cold and wet. But of course it wasn't, that would be hyperbole.
> 
> From one website: Writers use similes to explain things, to express emotion, and to make their writing more vivid and entertaining.



It's sad how much of this writing stuff you just don't seem to understand, and in your ignorance you try to create artificial levels of complexity to justify your bafflement.


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## Kevin

I think he meant that it was cold and wet like a frog's belly. Most people don't know the difference between a toad and a frog, and actually, toads, though they are not aquatic (generally)and therefor dry ( ...as opposed to frogs, which are aquatic) mostly like to come out at night or in the rain, fog, when there's moisture out, and ... When you pick one up they are likely to pee on you, so they would be, often, cold and wet on the underside. You see, I have a lot of in-the-field experience with toads, and frogs, lizards, snakes, rats, spiders, bugs in general, all of that 'creepy' stuff.


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## ppsage

Metaphors serve many purposes, but using specific meaning to create verisimilitude will usually be the least of it. Chandler is promoting creepy with that simile. Analysis, for the reader, is hardly ever a useful response to metaphor.


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## EmmaSohan

ppsage said:


> Metaphors serve many purposes, but using specific meaning to create verisimilitude will usually be the least of it. Chandler is promoting creepy with that simile. Analysis, for the reader, is hardly ever a useful response to metaphor.



I was first impressed by John Hart's careful choice of words and phrasing to create a mood, and only second started noticing his similes/metaphors. Right, for creating a mood, similes/metaphors are useful.

But the mood is that he is going through a lot of trouble to get to a client's house. If you call that a mood. Creepy doesn't really fit at all. It probably pulls the reader out of the story.

So, there are a lot of GREAT examples of using metaphoricals for mood, but I don't think that's one of them. Chandler wrote 80 years ago. Does anyone use that style nowadays except in parody?

Anyway, it's a _great _example of power. It's an example of a simile that doesn't really describe, though those aren't hard to find. (He was as clever as a fox.). Most similes and metaphors do stand up to analysis, but some do not and this is one.


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## EmmaSohan

Kevin said:


> I think he meant that it was cold and wet like a frog's belly. Most people don't know the difference between a toad and a frog, and actually, toads, though they are not aquatic (generally)and therefor dry ( ...as opposed to frogs, which are aquatic) mostly like to come out at night or in the rain, fog, when there's moisture out, and ... When you pick one up they are likely to pee on you, so they would be, often, cold and wet on the underside. You see, I have a lot of in-the-field experience with toads, and frogs, lizards, snakes, rats, spiders, bugs in general, all of that 'creepy' stuff.



Thanks.

So we just have to assume Chandler meant a cold, wet toad.

If I had trusted Chandler, I would have realized that toads could be wet. I also would have known they were cold blooded. (I had to look that up.) So his simile tells me a few things about toads.

Look, all this shows is that some similes don't describe and don't do well with analysis. Didn't we already know that?


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## moderan

We're getting pretty close to maximum density.


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## Olly Buckle

Not sure about 'creepy' exactly, but there sure is a mood being created, it is a summer, holiday, good time sort of place out of season, deserted, and at the wrong time of day, it matches well with that.


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## Kyle R

Terry D said:


> By choosing a common object -- the handrail -- and describing it in very tactile way Chandler instantly puts that handrail in the reader's hand.
> ...
> Yes, everyone knows what a handrail is, and everyone knows what a toad is, we don't need Chandler describing them. But, because he juxtaposes these two common things, he grabs the reader and pulls him/her into the story.



^ Well said. (Terry's entire post, actually, is worth rereading.)

The "toad's belly" comparison enhances the prose because it stimulates different regions of the reader's brain (those dealing with physical touch). The mind sparks. A sensation is elicited. Immersion is enhanced.

A line such as: "Her skin was like wet leather" would stimulate the reader's brain more than the clinical: "Her skin was wet, wrinkly, and rough to the touch." This has been shown through neuroscience.

Granted, you wouldn't want to use similes and analogies _all_ the time—overuse of anything is simply bad writing. But when you really want to make the writing pop and draw the reader in, a vivid (and hopefully _unique_) comparison can do wonders. :encouragement:


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## Kevin

EmmaSohan said:


> Thanks.
> 
> ...Chandler meant a cold, wet toad.
> 
> 
> 
> Look, all this shows is that some similes don't describe and don't do well with analysis. Didn't we already know that?


Yes, and I think we've even had a 'bad simile' thread here. Chandler has been spoofed many times as have other noir icons. It's because he's so loved. And by the way, is it time for my close up?


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## EmmaSohan

Terry D said:


> What writers need to understand about using similes is _why_ he chose to describe a common metal handrail the way he did. If you don't understand that then you are likely doomed to using them poorly. Our job as writers is to create a world for our readers that they can immerse themselves in and one of the best ways to do that is to choose small details and present them in a way which creates verisimilitude, making our liar's world seem real. By choosing a common object -- the handrail -- and describing it in very tactile way Chandler instantly puts that handrail in the reader's hand. In this case the simile achieves another function, perhaps an even more important one, it helps to establish mood and tone.



Metaphors and similes seem like a suboptimal choice if the only goal was to "choose small details and present them in a way which creates verisimilitude." They are a bit of work; why not choose something easy to describe? (Like, ironically, a cold wet rail.) They tend to be a bit abstract. And they refer to something not in the scene (a toad's belly), which seems an odd choice for rooting the reader in the scene. I wrote:

She could hear the tornado now, howling like a giant train.

My goal was to create tension. Yes, that is also a vivid sensory image bringing the reader into the scene, but I already had those. (And I could have written "She could now hear the howling tornado.") And talking about trains is an odd choice for bringing the reader into a scene with no trains.

One of the functions of a metaphor/simile is to create "mood and tone." Chandler's 78-year-old metaphor is probably not a good example of that (feeling a toad's belly is creepy and the scene is not), but we should be able to find good examples.


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## Olly Buckle

> I wrote:
> 
> She could hear the tornado now, howling like a giant train.
> 
> My goal was to create tension



Sorry, Emma, I didn't get tension at all, but power, a huge, unstoppable force. Still that's not too bad a result


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## EmmaSohan

Olly Buckle said:


> Sorry, Emma, I didn't get tension at all, but power, a huge, unstoppable force. Still that's not too bad a result



I'm happy with that.

I just noticed that ppsage said the same thing as me, although in fewer words: 'Metaphors serve many purposes, but using specific meaning to create verisimilitude will usually be the least of it."


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## EmmaSohan

moderan said:


> and the handrail was as cold and wet as a toad's belly." -- Farewell, My Lovely



I left her laughing. The sound was like a hen having hiccups.

I was trying to look at Chandler's style. Um, the similes and metaphors like the above stand out. Past that, Chandler uses a variety of metaphoricals in a competent way. He seems to have good variety, I think because he was working so hard on making metaphoricals. That was my experience too, and I still recommend it.

And, with no warning, one of the best metaphors I have ever read. Marlowe is miserable -- waking up in jail, he was doped, he was violently ill, he's weak. And we read:

Time passed again. I don't know how long. I had no watch. They don't make that kind of time in watches anyway.


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## Phil Istine

"...They don't make that kind of time in watches anyway"

I love that bit particularly as it conjures up the different perspectives I've had on time over the years - like wishing it to pass faster when ill or wanting a moment to last forever.  Yet it plods along at the same pace, oblivious to my or anyone's wishes.


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## EmmaSohan

I've been working on this issue for the last month, and I posted 17 tips for writing better metaphors, similes, etc. It's all from a writer's perspective, designed to help you write better. You can find it in my signature space, trailing behind me like an imprinted duckling.

Obviously, I am overjoyed to discuss any issues in writing or get any feedback. (Except I'm a little weary of discussing definitions.)


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## Arachne

Thank you Emmasohan, that prompted an interesting discussion which I enjoyed reading yesterday.

I'd just like to add my thoughts, even though I'm a bit late. 
I think the main thing to remember with similes and metaphors is that less is more. This is the case for the frequency and the actual length. I don't think anybody wants to read a simile or metaphor every few minutes, as they can break the flow of the writing, dragging the reader out of the world you've worked to create. Plain prose, which is necessary to the story and is well written, allows the reader to stay absorbed, but a simile or metaphor jumps out and gets noticed. This is why, when you do decide to include one, you better make sure that it's really, really good. For me this includes being brief; a long metaphor just screams 'look at me,' and stands out like a sore thumb, dragging the reader out of the story. It shows the story as being over-written and is a big turn-off for me.


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## EmmaSohan

Hi Arachne. Yeah, I was reading Ender's Game by Card and, first, was struck by how engaging it was. But it seemed light on metaphoricals. So they aren't essentially for good writing.

And that suggested he had a reasons not to use metaphoricals -- there's  cost. But still reasons to use them. I'm trying to think about the plusses and minuses.


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