#this just in: local pretentious girl writes metaphorically about metaphors until everyone falls asleep

[ravenvsfox]

your metaphor use straight up punches me in the throat (in a good way) do you have any tips or would you care to describe your process? like where you get inspiration/refining your metaphors? theyre just so lovely and beautiful and i struggle with succinctly forming metaphors that dont drag on for thirteen pages and feel like that meme of 'is nothing easy' where sasuke and the lady knock over cups and laundry detergent

oh my GOD great question and also you’re delightful

Here’s the thing: I really really like to be caught off guard by metaphors (even my own). You know when you’re reading & you realize you’ve got arms full of heartbreak or twitchy anger or heady romantic love and you can’t remember ever having made the choice to pick them up? 

Like the author describes a sweaty hand slipping on a doorknob over and over to explain anxiety or taking fistfuls of the sky and squeezing until it bruises as a spectacular sunset, and you see things you’ve never seen before, through a film of things you have? That’s when a metaphor has landed. 

It’s like meeting someone for the first time, and recognizing them from description alone. The thrill of knowing intimately how something looks on the inside without ever having laid eyes on it.

The main hiccups I see in other people’s writing are that they go too broad or overused i.e: the sky blushed pink, it lulled him to sleep like waves lapping at the shore, I felt anger boil my blood, her bruises were like galaxies, w/e it’s all been done kind of.. to death?

It’s helpful to zero in on really specific feelings; try to find the precise way something makes you feel, and chances are it’ll be both particular to you and available to others, if that makes sense? 

Like rain isn’t just wet or sweet-smelling or overwhelming -- it wants to know you better, it has a temper the same way your temperamental shower-head has a temper, it pelts birds and bugs off course, it holds the heads of flowers under water until they gasp and bloom, it gathers you close and releases you laughing, it warps your glasses into kaleidoscopes, it smells like walking to school when you were eight years old, looking at the puddles and thinking that the reflections of the sky were portals to the clouds

Like.. that’s me, that’s me staring really hard at the rain right now and finding my way to things I’ve ever thought or wondered about it, but it’s also not at all exclusive to me. And go weirder, get a little harder to understand, describe relief as standing in a parking garage with your keys biting into your hands and your heart eating itself whole, realizing that you’re on the wrong level, and your car hasn’t been stolen.

and don’t be afraid to..... leave it at that

the more you explain yourself the more the plot loses drive and coherency

like unfortunately not many people want to sit in a room and listen to someone fumble their way to the heart of a metaphor, which sucks bc I still do that! I want everyone to see exactly what I see, but it’s like firing arrows closer and closer to the bullseye and then finally hitting it after a page full of close calls. And you have to do that, do all the work, but then you yank all those practice arrows out and you’re left with your dead centre.

And some straight up don’t work. I sat and thought about how I could make a silly little metaphor about reflexively jolting forward when you see a green light in an intersection ahead of your own be about social inequality for 10 minutes yesterday, and then I scrapped it. 

(Put the bad ones in a book for later. At some point they’ll be.. not bad.)

So I mean, be fearless with your descriptions, make them personal, and don’t mercy kill the dumb ones until you’re sure they’re suffering. Take lots of inspiration from wherever you can (but don’t copy and paste -- I used to be so tempted by other people’s metaphors, hurricanes of curls and rooftops gilded with sunlight, but they didn’t taste the same coming up as they did going down), write a lot a lot a lot to hone in on your style, just bc mine is drippy with overwrought similes doesn’t mean yours has to be

but also like...... comparing writing to a #prime meme is already a really clear, succinct metaphor lmao 

Also the fact that you think I know shit, and that you’re being so kind about something I worry I’m hammering into your foreheads.. is really. good. absolutely keep writing until 13 good pages becomes 13 perfect words 💕