Style: Chapter 3: Figurative Language

First of all, if this is your first time exploring my style essays, please check out the Introduction. As usual, most of my examples are from my “textbook”: The Penguin Book of the Modern Short Story, ed. John Freeman (Penguin Press, 2021). I recommend—I dare say, insist—that writers get ahold of this book. It is an excellent source of spectacular writing, truly the best short story writers of the past fifty or so years. (I also recommend this book to writers of creative nonfiction, mainly because CNF generally employs the same elements of style found in literary fiction.)

What Is Figurative Language?

As an editor, I’m surprised that writers so often shun—I suspect, unwittingly—figurative language. I hope to rectify the situation. First a definition:

Merriam-Webster defines figurative language as “language that consists of or includes figures of speech (such as metaphors and similes).” I think it’s worth adding that figurative language encompasses a comparison (explicit or implicit) between two distinct domains of thought. I’ll put that in italics:

The nature of figurative language resides in the comparison (explicit or implicit) of two distinct domains of thought.

Figurative language (for reasons of concision, I’ll call it “fig lang” hereon) opens the text up. Things expand. Her eyes are like suns. We go beyond the immediate world of the text (her eyes), and enter a different domain (the sky (the suns)).

But why should we want to do this? Why must eyes or a stone or a sunset (or whatever) be something other than eyes or a stone or a sunset (or whatever)?

Here’s why: by going beyond what’s right in front of us, meaning deepens, becomes elusive and multiple, or clearer and multiple, or just multiple—and thus more interesting. Far from taking away from the matter at hand, we build upon it, like color to a pen & ink drawing, or money in a bank account.

Simile

Let’s get into some examples. I’ll start with simile, which Merriam-Webster defines as a comparison of “two unlike things . . . often using like or as.” 

The weight of his body lay on him like a corpse. —Nathan Englander, “The Twenty-seventh Man,” 214

Note that the weight of his body (or more specifically, the way it lay on him) was not literally a corpse (which would be a pure metaphor). It was like a corpse. Hence: simile. (Note: the simile–metaphor distinction is not always important; sometimes the latter is used as an umbrella term for all figurative writing. I might do this too, occasionally, below. Alas.)

. . . the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon. —Aleksandar Hemon, “The Conductor,” 338

Does the sky descend? Like a shadow? Like a shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon? None of this necessarily makes sense, but oh, does it convey (and deepen) meaning! (More on tone below.)

Metaphor

Merriam-Webster defines metaphor as “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.”

The high tide of barely suppressed acrimony of the last weeks at home subsided into the routines of hospital visiting . . . —Susan Sontag, “The Way We Live Now,” 119

Sontag equates a feeling (“acrimony”) directly (no like or as) to the tide. That is, the acrimony is in fact the tide (once high, now subsided).

A metaphor often creates a different sound (and a different meaning) than would a simile. It’s up to the writer’s ears (which is the same as saying the writer’s past readings) to know which works better. Sontag above could have described this barely suppressed acrimony as having risen “like a high tide.” Probably not an improvement, but it’s an option.

Another metaphor:

. . . his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. —Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried,” 133

That, my friends, is love.

Personification

No question, when we think about fig lang, similes and metaphors usually come first to mind. But there are a few other types—actually, depending on where you look, several other types—of fig lang. One of these is personification, or the “representation of a thing or abstraction as a person or by the human form” (Merriam-Webster).

. . . long fingers of moonlight beckoned us from the woods. —Karen Russell, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” 358

The boys’ names came back to me, at first dancing coyly out of reach, then, when I seized them in my hands, mine. —Lauren Groff, “The Midnight Zone,” 442

The moonlight doesn’t really have fingers. The boys’ names don’t really dance. Ergo, personification.

Allusion

Without going too far afield in this essay, I’ll briefly cover one more tool of fig lang: allusion, or “the act of making an indirect reference to something” (Merriam-Webster).

What she remembered most about Chan were his wrist braces, ornamental weapons that had three straps and, along the black leather, highly polished studs like those worn by Steve Reeves in a movie she’d seen about Hercules. —Charles Johnson, “China,” 86

Allusions can sometimes be tricky (see obscure fig lang below), depending on how much pressure the writer puts on the reader to recognize the connection. The example above (the allusion is in bold) is fairly clear (whether we’ve heard of the actor or seen the movie, or not). But if Johnson had instead written “highly polished studs like those worn by Reeves’s Hercules,” I suspect we’d all be (pleasantly?) a little lost. (In any case, great rhyme.)

Allusions, I think, deserve their own separate (longer) discussion, but they’re worth keeping in mind when you write. They’re one more way of moving beyond the “here and now” of the text.

Sound

The sound of fig lang—its simple presence in the text, and by extension in the air (the figurative air of our minds, or the literal air of the world)—works at a semantic level. That is, the reader hears fig lang and is changed in some mysterious, magical way, beyond the literal (or implied) connections the fig lang seeks to make. Fig lang is like a window you can’t necessarily see out of, but you know it’s there, it lightens the room.

Her blood moves as mysteriously as the constellations. —Joy Williams, “Taking Care,” 64

Does this really make sense? Don’t we essentially know how the constellations move? My point is, it doesn’t matter. It just sounds right.

And I remember, much later, seeing the same swirling sky in tiny liqueur glasses containing a drink called a King Alphonse: the crème de cacao rising like smoke in repeated explosions; blooming in kaleidoscopic clouds through the layer of heavy cream. —Stuart Dybek, “Pet Milk,” 97

Listen: “. . . seeing the same swirling sky . . . rising like smoke in repeated explosions . . . blooming in kaleidoscopic clouds . . .” There’s poetry here.

The road we were lost on cut straight through the middle of the world. It was still daytime, but the sun had no more power than an ornament or a sponge. —Denis Johnson, “Emergency,”163–4

“. . . an ornament or a sponge”? I’ll talk later about making your metaphors exceptional. Comparing the sun to an ornament or a sponge is not something I come across every day. (Denis Johnson once mentioned being influenced by Isaac Babel’s story collection Red Calvary, a masterwork of fig lang. I recommend everyone stop immediately and read this book (followed by Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan (followed by anything by Denis Johnson)).)

As I mentioned above, sometimes metaphors don’t make a ton of sense. The best ones simply roll off the tongue:

. . . I’d lost so much weight by then that I carried myself delicately, as if I’d gone translucent. —Lauren Groff, “The Midnight Zone,” 437

I mean, the narrator is obviously not translucent (clear, transparent), but the word is perfect. It gives the mind’s ear an image. Sound!

Variations

Fig lang goes beyond kind (simile, metaphor, etc.). I’ll cover a few variations below.

For Tone

While fig lang need not always make sense, it should often, in one way or another, set an appropriate tone (dark, light, playful, funny, etc.).

… his body expanded like baking bread … —Charles Johnson, “China,” 87

Baking bread gives the reading a positive (comforting, nutritive) tone. This simile would not really work if Johnson were describing a killer, or a lost lover, etc.

There’s almost something of the past about [pet milk], like old ivory. —Stuart Dybek, “Pet Milk,” 96

Dybek here is trying to convey not only the color of pet milk, but also a sense of the past. I think “old ivory” captures this tone well.

Short

Fig lang is often short and sweet:

. . . the sun sliding out of the sky like spit off a wall … —Junot Díaz, “Fiesta, 1980,” 173

(I obviously could have used this one as an example of tone.)

. . . his eyes looked like hirsute little comets. —Aleksandar Hemon, “The Conductor,” 339

Quick and easy. And wonderful! . . . hirsute [hairy] comets? (See sound above.)

Contempt felt good, like wine. —Ken Liu, “The Paper Menagerie,” 391

Again, note the added tonal meaning here: wine feels good, of course, but sometimes has consequences.

These short metaphors are relatively easy. They’re a good place to start if you’re new to using fig lang in your writing. I’ll talk about this more below. (Keep in mind, short does not mean hackneyed or boring. Always try to keep these things interesting. More on this, too, below.)

Long

Some fig lang can be quite long. If you’ve read your Homer (or much “old-fashioned” writing), you’ve already seen how metaphors can stretch out. But contemporary literary writing also sometimes employs such prolixity.

Rick Bass is one of my favorite writers of fig lang. Here’s a taste (I’ll embolden the figurative part):

An ice storm, following seven days of snow; the vast fields and drifts of snow turning to sheets of glazed ice that shine and shimmer blue in the moonlight as if the color is being fabricated not by the bending and absorption of light but by some chemical reaction within the glossy ice; as if the source of all blueness lies somewhere up here in the north—the core of it beneath one of those frozen fields; as if blue is a thing that emerges, in some parts of the world, from the soil itself, after the sun goes down. —Rick Bass, “The Hermit’s Story,” 227

And that’s just on the color blue!

The wind rose again and it had personality; it was in a sharpish, meanish mood. It rubbed itself against the little cabin and played at the corners and broke sticks off the trees and tossed them at the roof so they jigged down like creatures with strange and scrabbling claws. The wind rustled its endless body against the door. —Lauren Groff, “The Midnight Zone,” 445

(Obvious personification here, by the way.) Every writer will have to decide when to extend a metaphor, and when not to—and there’s no question that writing longer metaphors/similes takes some chops—but it’s a way to really “own” your style. It takes a certain panache, a ballsiness, you might agree, to write about the “personality” of the wind in nearly sixty words.

Obscure

I mentioned above that fig lang often makes things clearer for a reader. One might not understand the quality of my lover’s eyes, but one can probably imagine what it feels like to stare into a couple of suns (see my first example above).

Obscure fig lang is doing something else. It might be playing to the knowledge base of the intended reader (readers and writers enjoy feeling smart together). It might capture a somewhat unfamiliar time or place or area of study, targets of comparison that may fly right over many readers’ heads, like assegais. I recently wrote:

There was always a part of her, this friend of mine, that I couldn’t quite decipher, like a tiny, curled up, fourth spatial dimension, which I think Kaluza or Klein theorized was part of the fabric of the universe.

I’m obviously messing with my readers here. The obscurity is presented with clear intent.

Or, as always, the obscurity might simply be for sound.

Andrew Holleran likes to use fig lang in combination with proper nouns, often referring to pop culture. The challenge (obscurity) here depends on what the reader knows, but it certainly puts some pressure on the reading for some.

. . . he stood there with one arm on his hip and the other on top of the door, like Elizabeth Taylor in the poster for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. —Andrew Holleran, “The Penthouse,” 272

If you’re familiar with the poster of Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, great. If not, you might be like, what?

Here’s one more:

I see them sitting in cafes on St. Marks Place, all in black. They look like a Jules Feiffer cartoon. —Ibid., 275–76

Jules Feiffer, you ask? Click here.

Playful

Sometimes fig lang calls attention to itself in a playful way.

Acoustics in the Kingdome whirlpooled the noise of the crowd, a rivering of voices . . .  —Charles Johnson, “China,” 94

Johnson not only compares sound to liquid (a whirlpool, a river), but also turns these nouns into verbs. It’s playful stuff.

I can’t resist a couple of examples from beyond the Penguin book:

Bad men and evil happenings now swarmed about her like colorless rainbows of water vomiting out of wide-throated roof-pipes. —William T. Vollmann, The Royal Family, 181

This is ridiculous, of course, but with great intention.

The knife cuts through the apple like a knife cutting an apple. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, 775

Oh, Pynchon!

Writing Your Own Fig Lang

So how do you begin to incorporate fig lang into your own writing? Here are a handful of, I hope, helpful guidelines.

Read

As usual when I talk about style, I focus on the importance of reading. Below, I’m going to get into stealing ideas—think of reading as the bank you’ll rob.

But beyond stealing, there is no substitute for simply reading. Your inner (or perhaps outer) ears need to hear how the masters write. The sound of literary writing, over time, will seep into your bones.

Reading the stories in the Penguin book is a great place to start. But I hope you’ll chase down your own stylists. While you read, consciously look for instances of fig lang. You might even try, as an exercise, only focusing on this. For example, pick a story (perhaps one of the ones mentioned above), and underline each simile and metaphor. (You should find dozens in every piece.) This could be a good way to force yourself to take notice of how—and how often—writers use fig lang.

But I’ll emphasize that simply reading, without concern for learning per se, will allow you to absorb the sound of these prose stylists. It’s a combination of the conscious and the subconscious—deliberate study and relaxed leisure—that will help you find your own stylistic voice.

Steal

Look for great metaphors while you read, and steal (and (maybe) change) them. I talk about “stealing” often in these style essays. I’m obviously not suggesting you plagiarize. If you copy a long enough metaphor, you should at least cite it appropriately (this would be unusual, of course, but it’s something I actually do all the time in my fiction). What I’m really saying is: get ideas, and then mess with them.

I have a long document of similes and metaphors I’ve collected over the years, like a store of fresh water for my next drought. I’ll go to it now and have a drink. Let’s see, here’s a good one:

Something “gathered . . . like kites to carrion . . .” —Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World Is Forest, 137

So many options for this one. I’ll change it a bit:

The boys surrounded her like birds of prey to a corpse.

The people descend, like vultures to offal.

Etc. Steal the idea, find a good thesaurus (here’s my favorite), and see what you can come up with.

Many examples of fig lang are just plain stealable, sans alteration. If it’s short enough and simple enough, write it down, and maybe it will come in handy someday. I read once that something “clings like a limpet.” I like that. And it’s short enough to steal, as is. Sometimes, we’re just passing flames, we writers.

Start Small

As I discussed above, it’s not surprising that longer similes and metaphors are harder to write. When I edit beginning writers, I often suggest tightening their fig lang (assuming there’s any fig lang at all). Even many great writers stick to shorter fig lang. Here are a few more examples:

Her fingernails gleamed like glass.

They spoke in whispers, like children in class.

She struck the table hard, like a hand to an ass.

I just made these up (I hope that’s obvious). (And what do you know? They rhyme!) My point is, these were pretty easy. Longer ones will come. Or not. Even short similes and metaphors can work great, and their overall effect can add up in the mind of the reader.

Watch for Clichés

As an editor, I have the unique opportunity to read tons of unpublished writing, and I frequently come across the same metaphors again and again. His words were like a dagger to my heart. She shone like a star. The clouds were the color of a bruise. And so on. These metaphors have entered the realm of cliché. This is something to avoid (unless you’re being clearly ironic (see below)).

But how do you know if your fig lang has already been beaten like a dead horse? (I’m so sorry for that one.) The answer, of course, is to read! You need to train your ear for this stuff. Once again, there is no substitute to reading (short of hiring a well-read editor (hint hint)). So read read read!

One idea for keeping your metaphors fresh is to alter what is expected. For example:

He had been toying with his past for hours, like a cat with a moth.

A moth? Not a mouse? That’s kind of cool.

Here are a couple of very unhackneyed examples from the Penguin book:

. . . the critic raved, in syntax tortured on the rack of platitudes. —Aleksandar Hemon, “The Conductor,” 334

Nothing platitudinous about that metaphor.

There was no landline, no umbilicus . . .  —Lauren Groff, “The Midnight Zone,” 441

Again, that’s not a metaphor I see every day, but it works—and sounds—great.

Note that sometimes clichéd fig lang works fine. I suspect this happens when the writer has flexed their chops already. The reader, thus, has a sense that the writer knows what they’re doing. There’s a sense of irony in the cliché. I’ve even seen writers acknowledge the cliché, which is epic:

He looked at me and raised his eyebrows and shrugged. I know it’s a cliché, these gestures, but what can I say? This is what he did.

Make Your Fig Lang Exceptional

A bad (or clichéd) metaphor is usually worse than no metaphor at all. When I edit, I often mention David Mitchel’s admonition (from The Bone Clocks, 389): “. . . grade every simile and metaphor from one star to five, and remove any threes or below. It hurts when you operate, but afterwards you feel much better.”

I think this is good advice. Of course, we’re hoping for all fives, but this is not always (that is, never) possible. The fours should be good enough. And remember, sometimes it’s just the sound that’s the point. I’m sure that culling your threes on down will improve your prose.

And how on earth do you judge these things? It comes back to your own tastes and predilections, which, once again (I am a skipping record), is based on your reading. (Have I mentioned the importance of reading yet?)

A Fig Lang Edit

Consider doing what I call a fig lang edit. Go through your work, and do nothing but look for opportunities for similes and metaphors. You’ll create some duds, I’m sure—we all do—but you can—and should!—delete them later (use the David Mitchell rule above). The point is to get your mind in “fig lang mode,” and see what happens.

Read Aloud

Reading your prose aloud was something an early editor of mine suggested, and I highly recommend it. Your actual ears will hear things differently than your inner ears.

As with your prose in general, the quality of the sound of your fig lang is of paramount importance (in literary writing). Literally hearing your fig lang aloud will hopefully help catch infelicities. Does the fig lang work with the tone of the surrounding text? Does it complement the flow, rather than interrupt it? Does it just plain sound good? If you’re not hearing something musical as you read, go back and strive to compose music.

Let Your Writing Bake

Finally, I strongly recommend you set your writing aside for a while—I call this baking—long enough to basically forget about it, and then, much later, pull your work from the oven and read it again. This will allow you to hear your work with fresh ears. (You’ll also catch typos that you skated over in earlier reads.) I talk about this much more here.

Conclusion

I hope you not only find the above helpful, but also feel inspired to increase your use of fig lang. The “how-to” aspect of this essay is important, of course, but, as I mentioned above, some writers simply need the nudge. So roll up those sleeves (a cliché, sorry) and take your first step on your fig lang journey (another cliché, sorry). And best of luck.

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