Tag Archives: advice for writers

Metaphors — Add Color to Your Writing

What the Heck’s a Metaphor?

Metaphors are figures of speech that bring drama, color, texture, vision, history, action, or thrill to your work. For example:

Jax.2014-05.Twain

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
~William Shakespeare

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
~Mark Twain

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. Up above the world to so high, like a diamond in the sky.
~Jane Taylor

Hmmmm…anyone see a theme?

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Wikipedia starts with this definition:

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story, or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea (e.g., Her eyes were glistening jewels).

In Greek, the term metaphor meant “carry something across” or “transfer.” Aristotle defined it as “the act of giving a thing a name that belongs to something else.” Perhaps the most well-known type of metaphor is the simile. A simile uses the words as or like to give a much more comparative effect that transfers meaning from one element to another.

She hopped out of here quick as a bunny.

Life is like a box of chocolates.

In more subtle uses, however, a reader may not even recognize a metaphor, since no comparative words make it obvious a comparison has happened.

Jax.2014-05.sunset

As the sun set, night slowly spread its black wings against the clouded sky.

Obviously the night has no wings, but it is still being compare to something with black wings, perhaps a bat or raven—just without the use of like or as. Moreover, either creature brings more ominous images to the mind, gently leading the reader into a darker mood and setting.

His temper boiled over.

In this example, the verb is the metaphor, connecting a new property that isn’t inherent in the noun. For example, one’s temper is a state of mind or a feeling. But hot water boils. We’ve gone beyond merely informing the reader about his state of emotion (“he’s mad”) into suggesting a state of danger (“he’s hot—don’t touch him”).

Writing and Using Metaphors

Consider the following.

Her eyes were like the sea.

Readers might think color; blue-green, maybe gray. But they may also think calm and peaceful or deep and vast. By suggesting the sea you’ve invited your reader to imagine more about the character than simply the color of their eyes. Jennifer, the editor in our group, loves the word connotation. It’s critical in metaphors, as you can see in this example:

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

What is this saying about the sound, really? About the character making it? About the situation? About, well, the writer? When creating a metaphor you’ll want to consider both the reader and the world you’re writing about. For example:

Jax.2014-05.laptop

Watching the monitor, Mary’s fingers flew over the keyboard as she quickly typed in the dBase query. She was faster than a one-hundred megabit per second download.

Okay, you may happen to know that’s pretty frickin’ fast. However, the reader may not. This techy metaphor may have missed him or her. By using such techno-jargon, I’ve targeted a thin audience. That may be fine, if the book is about high-tech hackers. Now consider this:

In only one afternoon, Andrea milked the cows, fed the chickens, mucked the stalls, and churned her aunt’s butter. She was faster than a one-hundred megabit per second download.

Even if the readers are going to be a bunch of computer geeks (for some reason), we’ve lost touch with the setting and scene of the story. Yes, the reader knows that’s fast, but we’ve essentially kicked them out of this world.

So maybe something like…

Jax.2014-05.Horse

She was faster than slicked lightning.

Ok, that’s a bit more acceptable. But since we started on farm, how about staying on the farm?

She was faster than her uncle’s prized mare on the Beaufort County racetrack.

Interesting. Not only do we get the point, but we learned she lives in or near Beaufort County, and her uncle races horses.

HOMEWORK (?!)

Want to try your hand? Here are three starts to metaphors, including similes. For each, write a serious metaphor and a humorous one. Post your work in the comments, if you’d like. Show off your creative side!

1. The mountains were __________.
2. The parchment was like __________.
3. The TARDIS looked as if __________.

The Top Ten Worst of the Worst

  1. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
  2. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
  3. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

  4. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

  5. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

  6. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

  7. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

  8. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

  9. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law George. But unlike George, this plan just might work.

And my personal favorite—it’s either really bad or really good…

  1. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

About Jax Daniels

Leasspell is proud to announce that two of our members, Jax and Denise, won first and second place in the 2013 Assent publishing contest for their fantasy imprint, Phantasm Books. Jax’s debut novel takes place in her (now) home of New Orleans, and for all I know, she could live next door to Winki Witherspoon and Gateway Manor! Her book is full of fun characters, adventure, and imagination.

Dead Man’s Deal: When Winki Witherspoon inherits a New Orleans Mansion, she also inherits her own Magical talent. Can she master it and discover her late husband’s traitor before she, too, is destroyed?

Available from Amazon in August, 2014.

Appropriating Inspiration at BayCon 2014

Confession: I’ve let writing lapse lately and that feels BAD. Maybe that’s happened to you, too. Life gets in the way, and it’s hard enough to put one foot in front of the other, let alone put your fingers on the keyboard.

Seeking inspiration and writerly motivation, I spent this past Saturday and Sunday at Baycon 2014, one of the larger science fiction and fantasy conventions held annually in the San Francisco Bay Area. Along with Denise Tanaka and Jennifer Carson, I happily threw myself into the open arms of my fellow fen and found inspiration and motivation aplenty. Now here I am, writing, my fingers feeling fine as they tap the keys.

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I woke at 5:00 in the morning, and the first song of the day on shuffle was Laura Line’s “Dreams.” Good omen! Dreams inspire (several of my short stories have come from dreams that I’ve remembered upon waking), and the con would be filled with fellow dreamers.

Jennifer Carson looking at jewelry

Jennifer Carson looking at jewelry

By 10:00 a.m., I was in the dealer’s room with Jennifer, drooling over jewelry from Angelwear Creations. Jennifer (and, later, Denise) were drawn to the fantasy-inspired necklaces, but I was drawn to the science fiction pieces: silver rocket earrings, necklaces of silver shuttles in orbit around gemstones that look like planets, pins shaped like spiral-armed galaxies studded with pearls. Motivational? You bet. It’s often hard to find beautiful jewelry inspired by science fiction; at the typical SFF convention, jewelry inspired by fantasy—Celtic designs, dragons, and (lately) steampunk gears–far outnumbers science fiction pieces, a state of affairs that reflects the relative popularity of the two genres in ways that I find depressing, given that I primarily write science fiction. So I bought a spaceship-circling-a-darkling-moon necklace and wore it during the rest of the con! Wearing that necklace, I could defy the oft-repeated, demotivational claim that “most women don’t read science fiction.”

Kevin Andrew Murphy being inspired by the menu

Kevin Andrew Murphy being inspired by the menu

On Saturday, Denise, Jennifer, and I ate lunch alone. On Sunday, we were joined by several people from former writers groups whom I hadn’t seen in years, including Kevin Andrew Murphy and Wanda Kurtcu. (I had a chance to say howdy and thank you to Carrie Sessarego for her perceptive review of Skin Deep, my latest paranormal romance.) Sharing food and face-to-face conversations with these like-minded, long-lost friends, hearing how life and writing have treated them, helps put my own life and writing in perspective. Writing is a joy we can turn to when life isn’t.

Denise Tanaka giving her business card to Elanor Finster

Denise Tanaka giving her business card to Elanor Finster

Friends who aren’t long-lost can also inspire. Denise is shy, but at the con, she made a conscious effort to stand out and market her work. In her wizard’s robe and hat, staff in hand, she asked at least one question at every panel, handed out her business cards, struck dramatic poses, and furthered her brand. Her example inspires me, motivates me, to look for ways to make marketing what I write as enjoyable as the writing is itself.

Denise Tanaka in full wixzrd robes with staff

Denise Tanaka in full wixzrd robes with staff

Strangers, too, can inspire. Strangers in clever costumes. Strangers with smiles on their faces, complimenting my Firefly T-shirt or striking up a short conversation in line. Just being “of the Body” with the SFF community, being physically present in a place where so many others are, refreshes the spirit.

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Jennifer Carson, and Kyle Aisteach speaking at the panel on "Listening to That Critique"

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Jennifer Carson, and Kyle Aisteach speaking at the panel on “Listening to That Critique”

Certainly I was motivated by the topics for panel discussion (designing an effective book cover, marketing your work, using a pen name, making use of critiques, avoiding cultural appropriation, etc.) and by listening to what the panelists (authors, editors, artists, independent publishers) had to say about writing and creativity. But I found equal value in observing the panelists’ behavior. Watching how they made fans comfortable at signings, in the hallways, or in the Q&As after the panels gave me ideas about what to do and say (and not to do or say).

Random signs

Random signs

And the art: art in the dealers’ room, art in the artists’ room, random convention signage on the walls of the hotel–all inspirational. I wish I could show you images of the gorgeous, clever, thought-provoking artwork I saw, but I won’t infringe the copyrights. Looking at various paintings in the artists’ room, I thought about what would be inside a book if that painting were its cover, and although ideas for plot and characters came to mind, I found I was most inspired by the mood of the painting. I made a mental note to consider mood more consciously as I write.

Brad Lyau, Margaret McGaffrey Fisk, Leslie Anne Moore, and Wanda Kurtcu at the panel on "Cultural Appropriation in SFF Media and Costuming"

Brad Lyau, Margaret McGaffrey Fisk, Leslie Anne Moore, and Wanda Kurtcu at the panel on “Cultural Appropriation in SFF Media and Costuming”

When it was all over and I was back home, sitting on the couch in the dark while the cats roamed the room, I found myself pondering one panel in particular, the panel on cultural appropriation. The panel considered possible problems that can occur when a writer writes of a culture not his or her own, warning that such use can be offensive and harmful. In light of all the inspiration and motivation I’d been seeking at the con, I took this as a particularly apt caution.

Apt cautionary sign on convention wall

Apt cautionary sign on convention wall

As writers, we step outside ourselves to step inside ourselves. We take on the viewpoint of others in order to see ourselves more clearly. We create characters, we build worlds, we devise histories, we extrapolate or fantasize or faithfully recreate, all in words on a page outside of ourselves, all to better understand, explain, reflect, memorialize, realize something about ourselves. In writing about others, I come to know more about myself and am inevitably on some level writing about myself—myself among others, perhaps, but still myself. If I see others only from my own perspective, I see wrongly—not only those others, but also myself.

Hah! That’s rolling prose. I’m ready to write.

About Carolyn Hill

Carolyn received her doctorate in rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley, studying the argumentative artistry of Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough. She has taught writing, both general and genre, for over thirty years. She is a gifted writer of short stories, which are available in her short story collection, Liminal Eyes. Those who like longer works should check out her two novels, Bead’s Pickle and Skin Deep. When Carolyn is not writing, she is hurling heavy objects into the air above her head.

Characters in Search of a Plot

I got invited to join my first SF/F writer’s group after attending a workshop at a Baycon many years ago. I was so excited! I had taken creative writing classes in college, and I had been part of a mixed-genre writer’s critique group for a couple of years. This was the first group dedicated to speculative fiction. They would understand me, at last! It had a couple of professionally published authors, along with novices like me. I had high hopes, back then, that with a little spit and polish my manuscript would be rescued from the slush pile, and I’d be the next Marion Zimmer Bradley.

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Well…My manuscript needed a little more than spit and polish. It had some serious problems. It wasn’t so much the writing itself. I had a pretty good handle on all the mechanical things like pacing, description, dialogue, and so forth. Some tweaks to world building, okay.

Where the whole thing fell apart was my grasp of the main characters’ emotions. Writer’s group became more like therapy sessions for me. I sat and listened to everything that was wrong with my character’s behavior week after week. It was hard not to take it personally. To hear them read aloud excerpts and laugh, I cringed and could not believe I wrote that badly. My heroine was a bitch. My hero was an asshole, a creep, and a stalker. My villain was ridiculous. Clearly my intentions were not coming across on the page.

Like many novice writers, I started to get defensive. I went to the Number One Cop-Out position, which is to say, “That’s just my character’s personality. There’s nothing I can do about it.” And week after week, my characters got dragged through the ringer as my writer’s group got more and more frustrated.

One day, a pro writer in the group sent out a global email to me and cc: to everybody. (I shall refer to this fellow as K. for anonymity’s sake.) It was a very long message in very strong language with lots of F words and such. But it was not a rambling attack like most of what you see on the internet. It was a detailed, well-constructed essay with lots of specific examples and analysis. It made total sense. I read it and somehow a light bulb went on in my head. I wish I had saved it, because that was the kick in the pants I needed.

Of what I recall, K. informed me that my characters come from my own mind. They are not independent entities acting in a dream world where I am merely the spectator. I realized at that moment that all the advice in writing books was wrong. It was a mistake to let the characters behave according to their own will, for the sake of making them seem real. My characters are not real. They are created in my head, and I have control of them. It is my job to keep track of inconsistency and the flow of action/reaction. As the author, every word on the page is my responsibility.

After K. sent out that email, the others in the group got very worried about me. One woman (I shall refer to her as B.) called me on the phone and asked, “Are you okay? Are you going to quit writing?” I just laughed, no. I surprised everyone by being glad for the tough love. Maybe I didn’t know how to fix the problem right away, but for the first time I understood the problem.

Moral of the story? Critique groups helped me grow as a writer but only when I moved beyond simply taking the punches and listened to the message.

About Denise Robarge Tanaka

Denise is a lifelong writer of magical beings and creator of fantastic worlds. Her debut novel, Touch, is being published by Phantasm Books of Assent Publishing towards the end of the year.

Leasspell Writers Group—Finding our People

Writing is lonely. It’s in a room with a closed door. It’s in your head. It’s in another world. That world is wonderful, because in it, everything you ever dreamed of happens, but it’s yours and yours alone. When I play games or sports, I have my team or my opponent. When I make stained glass, I can share the process with others in the studio. But writing…I close my door, I put on headphones, and I disappear.

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At some point, you want your characters to walk outside of your head. You want to share your vision. But it’s not easy. Sports we can invite others to participate in through spectating. Art we can show all of our friends because it takes only a moment. But a book, that takes time. You can’t just show off your latest chapter to every relative or friend who comes around. When I have shared, more often than not I have to ask for feedback and a minute of generic conversation follows. These are not people who can share in my passion. These are not people who can understand what it is to have a world trapped inside you trying to get out. For that, a writer needs to find others who share a love of the written word.

This is why Leasspell was created in 2011 as an online writer’s group for fantasy and science fiction. Leasspell is an Old English word that means a story or fiction. It is a place to weave our spells with our tales and immerse ourselves in writing with others. Leasspell was started as a place to teach each other what we knew and to learn the strengths others shared. It gives a sense of community and the all-important deadline to keep us writing. It shares our unique individual visions. And of course, it shows us the cracks in our work through critique and girds us with the armor of praise when we need to get up and try again.

As I near the end of writing my book, I have begun to think about the future. I read a favorite author’s blog that started when he got published. I read other blogs of authors remembering their days before publication. I thought, what if I started blogging about my experience in real time? Shared my triumphs and my failures as I tried to find my avenue to publishing? But that is as far as I went…until two members of our group won a contest and a publishing contract with a small press. I thought, what better time to start a blog about the journey we take as writer’s seeking to unloose our worlds on the real one?

This blog is about encouraging that sense of community. We at Leasspell hope in the days ahead to talk about how to create an online writers group and how to (and not to) critique. We want to share with you the knowledge we’ve given each other and discuss the process of writing. We hope to celebrate our successes and bare our failures as they unfold in real time and to talk about how to find, as one of our members puts it, your own people.

About Jennifer L. Carson

I have dreamed about my characters and my worlds since before I was eight. I wrote my first story before I read my first novel. Writing is my life, from my career as an editor to my leisure time as a writer, amateur teacher, and occasional guest speaker on this subject so near and dear to my heart. If you can’t find me, look no further than the world of Indirian where I am crafting my epic fantasy novel, In a Mortal Shadow.