Content

• Steps
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The metaphor is the sharp knife hitting your ribs, the slow edges that slow your writing, the monster hiding in your closet… Oh horrible! Metaphors are hard - without a doubt - but if you follow the instructions below, the metaphors will be a great spice to the food you serve up for your readers!

Steps

Part 1 of 2: Understanding metaphors

1. 

   Understand what a metaphor is. The word "metaphor" (English: metaphor) comes from the ancient Greek metapherein means "carry over", or "carry over." Metaphor "translates" the meaning of one concept to another by naming or implying an object was the other (while comparison uses the word "like" or "like" to compare two things). Let's look at some of the following famous examples:
   • End of work The Great Gatsby (Great Gastby) is a famous metaphor: "And we continue to engage, boats upstream, constantly swam into the past."
   • The poet Khalil Gibran uses many metaphorical images in his poetry, such as: "Every word is just crumbs falling from the banquet of thoughts."
   • The postmodern science fiction novel by William Gibson Neuromancer Begin with the sentence: "The sky above the blue harbor of the TV screen lost the signal."
   • The poet Sylvia Plath's poem "Cut" uses metaphor to express painful feelings in a tone that evokes curiosity:
     Whoa!
     Not an onion, but my finger.
     Most of the upper part fell off
     Only pieces left
     skin....
     This must be the celebration.
     From the slit,
     Millions of British soldiers in red uniforms.

2. 

   
   
   Recognize rhetorical measures other than metaphors. There are many rhetorical measures that evoke association between two things, including magic compare, metonymy, and reform. Although having a similar effect with the metaphor, these rhetorical measures are slightly different.
   • A comparison consists of two parts: the thing to be described and the thing to be described. In the comparison "the cake is too bitter to be bitter like coal", the cake is the object described, and the coal is the object to describe. Unlike the metaphor, comparison uses the word "like" or "like" to signal comparison, so the effect of comparison is usually considered a little worse.
   • Metonymy replaces the name of one thing with the name of another thing closely related to it. For example, the word "throne" is often used to refer to the throne, and in the United States, the administration of the president and the cabinet is often referred to as the "White House".
   • The synonym is a saying that uses a part to refer to the whole, such as "striker" to refer to a football player, or "puncher" to refer to a boxer.

3. 

   
   
   Understand the forms of metaphor. Although the basic meaning of a metaphor is relatively simple, the usage of a metaphor covers many levels, from very simple to extremely complex. The metaphor can simply compare two things, for example, "Looks so cold on the outside, but he is actually a candy". However, in literature, metaphorical sentences often go through many sentences, even many scenes.
   • Extensive metaphor Used across phrases or sentences. The cumulative nature of this form of metaphor has a powerful and vivid effect. The narrator in the novel Seize the Night (Night Catch) by Dean Koontz uses extensive metaphors to describe his wild imagination:
     “Bobby Halloway used to say my imagination was three hundred circus stage rounds. And now I'm in the second hundred and ninety-nine, with dancing elephants, acrobatic clowns and tigers jumping through the ring of fire. It is time to step back in, leave the circus, go buy popcorn and a can of Coke, enjoy and relax. "
   • Implicit metaphor more subtle than simple metaphor. While a simple metaphor says someone is a "candy", an implicit metaphor further describes his or her attributes: "At first I thought he was cold, but later I learned. He's so sweet inside. ”
   • Dead metaphor are metaphorical words that become so popular in everyday life that they lose their original effectiveness because they are so familiar, such as "life flow", "killing time", "heartwarming", "heels Asin. ". Clichés (clichés) are also dead metaphors, phrases used to convey a deeper meaning. The phrase "Asin heel" above is also a cliches, indicating a person's critical weakness.

4. 

   
   
   Recognize mixed metaphors. The 'fusion' metaphor brings the components of many metaphors into one unit, often leading to confusing and absurd results. For example, "Wake up and smell coffee on the wall," is a mix of two metaphorical expressions that contain two catchy phrases: "Wake up and smell coffee" and " Read the news on the wall. ”
   • Catachresis is the official term for mixed metaphor. Some writers use this form of metaphor deliberately to create an ambiguous effect that conveys an inexpressible sense of irrationality or intensity. Poem Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond (Somewhere he has never been) by E.E. Cummings uses catachresis to express his inexpressible feelings of his love for his lover: “The sound in my eyes is deeper than all roses - / no one in the world, not even a raindrop. , with such beautiful little hands ... "
   • Catachresis can also be used to describe a confused or contradictory psychological state, such as the famous monologue "Living or not living" in the play. Hamlet by William Shakespeare: “Living, or not being - that matters. Endure all the stones, arrows of cruel fate, or take up arms to rise up against the waves of suffering, against to destroy them, whichever is more noble? " (Hamlet, the Vietnamese translation of the group Dao Anh Kha, Bui Y and Bui Phung. Literature Publishing House, 2008) Obviously we cannot take arms against the waves of the sea, but the mixed metaphor helps convey Hamlet's torn feelings.

5. 

   Understand the validity of metaphors. If used skillfully, metaphors can enrich language and enhance the meaning of what you want to express. It can convey many profound meanings in just a few words. It also encourages positive reading and requires your readers to interpret your text in their own way.
   • Metaphorical speech can describe the emotions behind the action. For example, the phrase "Julio's Sparkling Eye" would be more vivid and fierce than "Julio's angry gaze."
   • Metaphor can convey large and complex thoughts in just a few words. In one verse of the poem Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman tells readers that they are the best poem themselves: "Your flesh will be the best poem, and fluency lies not only in words but also in the silence on your lips."
   • Metaphors can encourage creativity. It is easy to use everyday words to describe it: the body is the body, and the ocean is the ocean. But the metaphor will allow you to creatively and expressively convey a simple idea, something that Anglo-Saxons love: "body" becomes "house of bones" and "ocean". becomes the "whale path".
   • You can show off your skill with a metaphor. Or at least so did Aristotle (and who could object?) In the work Poetry "But the best thing so far is the mastery of metaphor. It is something that cannot be learned from others; and also a sign of genius, for a good metaphor can convey an intuitive sense of similarity in difference. "

6. 

   
   
   Read lots of examples. There is no better way to understand the use of metaphors and find the style that works best for you than by reading works with ingenious metaphors. It is not uncommon for authors to use this rhetorical approach, so no matter what literary genre you love, you will find very good examples.
   • If you are not afraid to read difficult works, read John Donne, a poet of the 16th century with very good metaphors that very few English writers have. Poems such as "The Flea" and his poem Holy Sonnet borrow complex metaphorical images to describe experiences of love, religious faith, and death.
   • Speeches by Pastor Martin Luther King, Jr. is also known for its metaphor and other rhetoric. His speech "I have a dream" used metaphorical imagery of a wide range of meanings, such as the description of black Americans living on "a lonely, poor island in the middle of the ocean. material wealth."
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Part 2 of 2: Writing metaphorical sentences

1. 

   
   
   Use your imagination to think about what you want to describe. What properties does it have? How does it work? How does it make you feel? Does it taste? Record any descriptions of the idea that come to mind. Don't get lost in obvious details that everyone can see; Metaphors are thoughts that go out of the way.
   • For example, if you want to write a metaphor about "time," try writing down as many attributes as possible: slow, fast, dark, broad, heavy, flexible, evolving, changing, artificial, evolution, pause, stopwatch, race, glide.
   • Don't overdo it in this step; Your aim is to come up with as much information as possible. You can always eliminate the following irrelevant ideas.

2. 

   
   
   Free association. Make a quick note of things that share those properties, and this time too, don't look for those too obvious; The more ambiguous the association, the more interesting the metaphor is. If you are writing metaphors for a concept, train your brain to be more flexible by comparing it to an object. For example, if your theme is justice, ask yourself what animal it could be.
   • Avoid using clichés. As Salvador Dalí once said, “The first person to match a girl's cheeks to rose petals was indeed a poet; but the first person to repeat this is a fool. ” The purpose of the metaphor is to convey your ideas with influence and creativity in a concise way: A cup of caramel chocolate ice cream and rich sea salt for a whole bowl of bland vanilla yogurt.
   • This is brain activity, so let your imagination soar! For the "time" example, the unlimited association could be ideas such as: rubber bands, immensity, 2001, abyss, enemy, ticking clock, weight, waiting, loss , adapt, expand, come back.

3. 

   Decide what psychological state you want to give. Do you want to make or maintain a particular tone? Do your metaphorical images need to fit into the larger context? Use this to remove irrelevant associations from the list.
   • In the "time" example, suppose you want to create a "supernatural / divine" feel, discard ideas that don't fit with that mentality: enemies, 2001, weights, and clocks. tick, because these words are quite "mundane".
   • Try to remember the nuances of your chosen theme. For example, if you want to compare the concept of justice with an animal, a "cheetah is looking for prey" to convey a very different meaning of "justice" than a "sluggish elephant". However, both of the above metaphorical images are still more appropriate than the "newborn kitten" image.

4. 

   Expansion of ideas. Write a few sentences, paragraphs, or a page of paper comparing the original topic with the associations you just came up with. At this point you do not need to bother with writing metaphor; Focus on ideas to see where they take you.
   • For the "time" example, this step might produce a sentence like this: "Time is an elastic rubber rope, it shoots me into the unknown place and takes me back to the center." This sentence takes an idea from Step 2 and starts to attach to it concrete actions and properties - the starting point of the metaphor.

5. 

   Read it out loud. Metaphor draws attention to the mechanism of language action, so it is important for the sound to be read out loud. listen must match the content. A metaphor describing softness should not have many strong consonants; Sentence with depth should contain lower vowels (ohh and umm); and the description of the possible redundancy using the alliterations (repetitive sounds); et cetera.
   • In the example sentence created in Step 4, the basic idea is yes, but the word behind it is not strong enough. For example, there are very few alliterations in this sentence, which can be very helpful if you want to convey a feeling of repetition. The idea of ​​a "rubber rope" also evokes the image of a person or object in action shoot rubber strap, and this reduces the focus Time which is the subject of action.

6. 

   Turn your ideas of comparison into metaphors. Write a metaphor that compares the original topic to one of the things or concepts you have come up with. Is it reasonable? Is it unique? Does it match the feeling? Are there any other sentences that sound better? Don't immediately accept the first idea that sounds downright bad; Be ready to throw out one idea if it comes to your mind.
   • For example, if you add messages and actions TimeYou would have a sentence like this: "Time is a bullet train; it doesn't stop waiting for anyone." Now the focus is entirely on time, and consonant t Repetition increases the sense of repetition that the metaphor is aiming for.

7. 

   Expand your ideas. Metaphorical images are often used as nouns - "her face is a picture," "every word out is an arrow" - but they can also be used like other words, and often refer to unexpected and powerful effects.
   • Using metaphorical words like verbs can power action (sometimes literal!): "That news choked your throat in its iron hand" expresses a feeling more fierce than "I can't breathe."
   • Metaphorical images are used as adjectives and adverbs that can vividly describe things, people and concepts in just a few words: “The teacher's carnivorous pen devours the essays of study students, occasionally spitting out blood-stained criticism "expressing the teacher's idea of ​​a pen (itself also a metonym for the teacher) ripping off the texts and eating them, leaving only a puddle blood and heart when finished eating.
   • The metaphorical words used as possessive pronouns can describe the nature of the action and the thought behind it: "Emily examined her sister's suit with the surgeon's eyes" implied that Emily was confident of being a fashion expert, that she had meticulous attention to detail, and she saw her sister's clothes as a disease that was about to have surgery to remove if necessary (perhaps not something her sister likes).
   • Using metaphors such as a predicate (a noun or noun phrase placed behind to explain the word in front or its synonym) or a modifier can make a sentence more shiny and creative: "Homer Simpson, a yellow pear in pants, crept up to the front."
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Advice

• Learning about other rhetorical measures can help you gain insight into associations between seemingly unrelated things.
  • Characterize: Assign an object (usually an inanimate) the human attributes. This is a way of giving depth to depicted images with words often just used to describe people. "Brave adventurers enter the mountain's gaping mouth." As you may have noticed, human attributes are not necessarily monopoly for humans, though usually so: "The familiar old chair welcomes her back as if she has never left this place."
  • Analogy: Comparison between two pairs things, a: b :: c: d (eg hot to cold like fire to ice). The analogy can be used to express sarcasm, such as the proverb "Honestly one can drive a buffalo. Less direct, Spenser's poem is a subtle sublimation of "I turn fire to my frozen lover ..." (translated by Hoang Nguyen Chuong).
  • Glossy speech: an expansive story in which people, things or ideas represent another thing, giving a story two meanings, one literal and one figurative. In figurative language, almost every character or thing has a meaning. You can read it Animal Farm, a form of shadow of the Soviet Union, where the herds of cattle rallied against the rancher and established their own equal society, but then gradually they formed a hierarchical system. engrave that they must fight to escape.
  • Parable: A story that conveys the narrator's point of view or lesson. One example is the fable E Dop (the example is about a mighty lion sparing his life for a tiny mouse, and then the mouse saves the lion from a human trap - implying that even the weak also have their strengths).
• Writing is a skill. The more you practice, the better you will write.
• Do you remember something called "grammar"? Turns out it is have that is the purpose. Make sure you write grammatically correctly so that your readers understand what you want to convey.
• No matter how hard you try, many of the metaphors you write may not work. But okay. You just have to discard it and move on to something else. Maybe you will be inspired by the muse and write down better ideas somewhere.
• A good way to improve writing skills using metaphors is to start writing poetry. You can even post your poems on your blog!