Episode
Metaphor Magic: Wield Your Pen Like a Wand
- Podcast
- Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach
- Published
- Jun 20, 2024
- Duration seconds
- 801
- Processing state
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- https://podcast.show/the_writing_life/episode/132861971/
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Summary
When I was a child just beginning to speak, my parents drove late into the evening to the rural property they bought. As they drove up the gravel driveway, the sky spread out above us with stars glittering like a million diamonds spread out on a jeweler’s vast black velvet display. Across the fields, a million lightning bugs hovered in the tall grass, their gleaming bodies flickering on and off. I pointed at the sky. “’Tars!” Then I pointed at the field. “Baby ’tars!” Perhaps I was destined to become a poet from early on, but my confidence in landing on that perfect metaphor virtually disappeared over the years. As a young adult, when I was writing books and blog posts, I rarely integrated metaphors into my writing, and it showed. My work was straightforward. Plainspoken. While there’s nothing wrong with clear writing—in fact, that’s the foundation of nonfiction according to Ayn Rand ( clarity first, then jazziness, she says 1)—it lacked punch and pizzazz. My writing didn’t lift off the page and sink into the imagination or heart of the reader. It lacked that magical moment where an idea or image clicks and sticks with the reader. Mastering Metaphors to Produce Great Writing And I knew mastering metaphors was essential to great writing. I did write poetry in college, admiring lines like Emily Dickinson’s: “Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul –2 Shakespeare’s: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players;3 And Wordsworth’s: “I wandered lonely as a cloud.”4 Robert Frost said, in an interview in The Atlantic, “If you remember only one thing I’ve said, remember that an idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor. If you have never made a good metaphor, then you don’t know what it’s all about.”5 Practic…