Understand what a metaphor is. The word “metaphor” derives from the ancient Greek word metapherein. which meant “to carry over” or “to transfer.” [1] A metaphor “carries” meaning from one concept to another by stating or implying that one of them is the other (whereas a simile compares two things by saying one is “like” or “as” the other). To know what to aim for, it may help to look at a few famous examples.

• The last line of The Great Gatsby contains a very famous metaphor: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
• The poet Khalil Gibran used many metaphors in his poetry, including this one: “All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.” [2]
• William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer opens with the line: “The sky above the port was the color of television, turned to a dead channel.” [3]
• Sylvia Plath’s poem “Cut” uses metaphor to convey a painful experience in a curious tone:
  What a thrill—
  My thumb instead of an onion.
  The top quite gone
  Except for a sort of hinge
  Of skin.
  A celebration this is. Out of a gap
  A million soldiers run,
  Redcoats every one. [4]

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Understand what a metaphor isn’t. There are many other figures of speech that create associations of meaning between two concepts, including simile. metonymy. and synecdoche. [5] However, while these are similar to metaphor, they work a little differently.

• A simile has two parts: the “tenor” (the thing being described) and the “vehicle” (the thing/s used to describe it). In the simile “the brownie was so overcooked that it tasted like charcoal,” the brownie is the tenor and the charcoal is the vehicle. Unlike metaphors, similes use “as” or “like” to signal their comparisons, and thus they’re usually considered a little weaker in effect.
• A metonymy substitutes the name of one thing for the idea of another that is closely related to it. For example, in many countries the system of royal power invested in a monarch is simply called “the crown,” and in the United States the presidential administration and its authority are often just called “the White House.”
• A synecdoche refers to a larger concept by using a part of that concept, as in the use of the phrase “hired hands” for “laborers” or referring to one’s car as “my wheels.”

Understand the types of metaphors. While the basic idea of a metaphor is quite simple, metaphors can operate on a variety of levels from very simple to very complex. Simple metaphors may state the comparison between two things outright, as in the example “He may seem mean, but he’s really a cupcake.” In literature, however, metaphors are often extended across sentences or even scenes. [6]

• Sustained. or extended/telescoping metaphors span across several phrases or sentences. Their accumulative nature makes them very forceful and vivid. The narrator of Dean Koontz’s novel Seize the Night uses a sustained metaphor to describe his wild imagination:
  “Bobby Halloway says my imagination is a three-hundred-ring circus. Currently, I was in ring two hundred and ninety-nine, with elephants dancing and clowns cartwheeling and tigers leaping through rings of fire. The time had come to step back, leave the main tent, go buy some popcorn and a Coke, bliss out, cool down.” [7]
• Implied metaphors are more subtle than simple metaphors. Whereas a simple metaphor might say that a person seems mean, but is really “a cupcake,” an implied metaphor would attribute cupcake-like characteristics to the person: “He can seem mean until you get to know him, and then you find out he’s all gooey and fluffy inside.”
• Dead metaphors are metaphors that have become so common in everyday speech that they’ve lost the power they once had because they’re too familiar to us: “raining cats and dogs,” “heart of stone,” “tie up loose ends,” “red tape.” Clichés, on the other hand, are phrases often used to convey significant meanings. In the case of “red tape,” legal documents used to be bundled with red tape (or ribbon) before being sent away to various offices, so a process getting caught up in “red tape” referred to a document that was still waiting to be examined.

Recognize mixed metaphors. A “mixed” metaphor combines elements of multiple metaphors into a single unit, often with awkward or hilarious results. [8] The example, “Wake up and smell the coffee on the wall,” mixes two familiar metaphorical sayings that contain similar commands to pay attention to something: “Wake up and smell the coffee” and “Read the writing on the wall.” [9]

• Catachresis is the formal term for mixed metaphors, and some writers use them intentionally to create confusion, impart a sense of the absurd, or express a powerful or inexpressible emotion. The poem somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond by e.e. cummings uses catachresis to express how it’s impossible to put his love for his beloved into words that make sense: “The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses — / nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands….” [10]
• Catachresis can also be used to demonstrate a character’s confused or contradictory state of mind, as in the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Hamlet wonders “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing end them?” [11] Obviously, you can’t really take up arms to fight against a sea, but the mixed-up metaphor helps communicate how troubled Hamlet feels.

Understand how metaphors work. Used wisely, metaphors can enrich your language and enhance your meaning. They can communicate a world of meaning in just a few words (like this sentence just did with “world of meaning”). They also encourage active reading and ask your reader to interpret your writing in his or her own way. [12]

• Metaphors can communicate emotion behind actions. For example, the phrase “Julio’s eyes blazed” is more vivid and intense than “Julio’s eyes looked angry.”
• Metaphors can convey immense, complex ideas in a few words. In one version of his long poem Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman tells his readers that they are actually the greatest poetry: “your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face.” [13]
• Metaphors can encourage originality. It’s easy to rely on everyday language to convey ideas: a body is a body, an ocean is an ocean. But metaphors allow you to convey a simple idea with creativity and expressiveness, something that the ancient Germanic people known as Anglo-Saxons were very fond of: “body” becomes “bone-house” and “ocean” becomes “whale-road”. [14]
• Metaphors show off your genius. Or at least, Aristotle says so (and who are we to argue?) in his Poetics. “But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.” [15]

Read as many examples as you can find. There’s no better way to understand how metaphors work, and decide what metaphors make the strongest connection with you, than to read works that use them well. Many authors use metaphors, so no matter what your literary tastes are, you can probably find some excellent examples.

• If you don’t mind difficult reading, very few writers in English used metaphor as well as the 16th-century poet John Donne: poems like “The Flea” and his Holy Sonnets employ intricate metaphors to describe experiences like love, religious faith, and death. [16]
• The speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. are also famous for their skillful use of metaphor and other rhetorical devices. King’s “I have a dream” speech uses metaphor extensively, such as the idea of Black Americans living on “a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” [17]

Tips Edit

Understanding other figures of speech may provide additional insight into how to associate seemingly unrelated things.

• personification. association of a non-human (usually inanimate) object with a human characteristic. This is a way of giving depth to a description by bringing in all the lyrical baggage of a term we normally associate with a person. “The intrepid spelunkers entered the mountain’s open maw.” As you can see, the human characteristic need not be uniquely human, but it often is. “The old familiar chair welcomed her back, as if she had never gone.”
• analogy. comparison of two pairs of things, a:b::c:d (e.g. hot is to cold as fire is to ice). Analogy can be used to make a satirical point, as in “My brother says he’s trustworthy, but given his track record, my brother is trustworthy like Machiavelli was humanitarian.” While not linear, Spenser’s 16th century analogy is subtly sublime, “My love is like to ice and I to fire. “
• allegory. an extended story in which people, things or ideas represent other things, giving the story two meanings, one literal and one symbolic. In an allegory, nearly every figure and object has a meaning. Just think of Animal Farm, an allegory about the Soviet Union wherein farm animals revolt against their masters, form their own egalitarian society, and gradually recreate the very hierarchy that they fought to escape from.
• parable. a story that demonstrates the teller’s point or lesson. Famous examples include Aesop’s Fables (ex. a mighty lion spares a puny mouse who later frees the lion from a hunter’s trap – i.e. even the weak have their strengths).

Writing is a skill. The more you practice it, the better you get.

Remember that stuff called “grammar”? Well, turns out it has a purpose. Be sure you write correctly so your audience clearly understands you.

No matter how hard you try, some metaphors just don’t work. If this happens, that’s okay. Just kill it and move on to something else. Maybe your muse will inspire you in greater ways elsewhere.