Craft Guide – Language and Meaning
Writing Metaphor in Fiction
Metaphor is the fundamental cognitive tool by which prose creates meaning. It says one thing is another – and in that assertion, it reveals what the writer actually thinks about the world.
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Simple rule: generate metaphors from your story's own specific material
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Fates for dead metaphors: avoid, use deliberately, or revivify
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Mixed metaphors that survive a literal visualisation test
Six Principles of Metaphor in Fiction
Metaphor vs. Simile: When Each Fits
The choice between metaphor and simile is rarely grammatical – it is tonal. A metaphor asserts identity: this thing is that thing, and the reader must accept the logic. A simile hedges with “like” or “as,” allowing the reader to hold the comparison more loosely. Metaphor is more forceful and more committed; simile is more exploratory and often more appropriate when the comparison needs to remain provisional or when a character is searching for language rather than finding it.
The Extended Metaphor and Its Architecture
When a single comparison is developed across an entire passage, it creates a secondary logic – an alternative way of understanding the subject that reveals things literal language cannot reach. Grief is a country: you can then ask about its borders, its language, its currency, its customs for strangers. The extended metaphor works because each new element of the mapping either confirms or productively strains the original comparison, and the strain is often where the real meaning lives.
Dead Metaphors and Their Three Fates
A cliché is almost always a dead metaphor – a comparison so frequently used that the comparison is no longer perceived. Writers have three choices: avoid them entirely by generating fresh language; use them deliberately as markers of a character's unexamined speech; or revivify them by pressing on the original image until the reader sees the comparison again. “He was drowning in paperwork” is dead. “He had been drowning in paperwork for so long he had stopped noticing the water” briefly revives it.
Generating Metaphors from Story Material
Stock figurative language – reaching for sports, military, or travel metaphors by default – produces prose that could have been written by anyone about anything. Original metaphors grow from the novel's specific world. A character who works with machinery will reach for mechanical comparisons. A story set in winter will generate figures of cold and enclosure. The writer saturates themselves in the story's material and lets the material supply the terms of comparison rather than importing them from general stock.
The Mixed Metaphor Problem
A mixed metaphor compounds two or more incompatible comparisons in the same image, producing incoherence: “we need to take the bull by the horns and hit the ground running.” The failure is not just aesthetic but cognitive: the reader's mind attempts to follow the logic of both comparisons simultaneously and finds they contradict each other. The test for mixed metaphor is to visualise the image literally – if the picture it creates is impossible or absurd, the metaphor is mixed.
Figurative Defaults as Worldview
Every writer has a repertoire of habitual comparisons that they reach for without thinking – and that repertoire is a map of their unconscious assumptions about how the world works. A writer who reaches constantly to economic metaphors (investment, cost, return) frames human relations in transactional terms. A writer whose figures are drawn from landscape and weather understands people as subject to forces they cannot master. Examining your figurative defaults is a way of understanding your own worldview – and deciding whether to deepen or challenge it.
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Start writing for freeFrequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between metaphor and simile?
A simile says one thing is like another: “Her voice was like gravel.” A metaphor says one thing is another: “Her voice was gravel.” The difference is more than grammatical. A simile acknowledges its own comparison – it signals that it is a figure of speech – while a metaphor asserts an identity. Metaphor is more immediate and more absolute; simile is more mediated and often more appropriate when the comparison needs to be held lightly.
What is the extended metaphor and how does it work structurally?
An extended metaphor is a single comparison developed across multiple sentences or an entire passage, sometimes an entire work. Once the initial mapping is established – grief is a country, the mind is a house – each subsequent element of the metaphor draws on that mapping, adding new dimensions and testing its limits. The structural power of the extended metaphor is that it creates a coherent alternative logic for understanding experience.
What is a dead metaphor and how do you handle it?
A dead metaphor is a figure of speech that has been used so often the comparison is no longer perceived: the leg of a table, the foot of a mountain, the mouth of a river. Most clichés are dead metaphors. Writers have three options: avoid them entirely and generate fresh comparisons; use them deliberately for a character's voice, knowing they are dead; or revivify them by pressing on the original comparison in a new context, making the reader see it again.
How do you generate original metaphors from the story's specific material?
The best metaphors in a novel come from the novel's own world. A story set in a fishing community will naturally generate comparisons drawn from nets, tides, and the weight of water. A story about a tax lawyer will reach toward contracts, clauses, and the small print of human arrangement. The writer generates original figurative language not by hunting for clever comparisons but by being saturated in the story's specific material and letting that material supply the terms of comparison.
What do a writer's habitual metaphors reveal about their worldview?
What a writer reaches for to explain one thing reveals what they really think about everything. A writer whose habitual metaphors are drawn from commerce sees human relations in transactional terms. A writer who reaches constantly to weather and landscape understands people as subject to forces they cannot control. Examining your figurative defaults is a way of understanding your own assumptions – and of deciding whether to deepen them or complicate them.