Words With Impact: Discover Metaphoric Threads

Workshop: Discover Words That Sing

“Metaphor does that. It helps us explain ourselves to ourselves. It helps us explore and examine forces that we cannot otherwise come to terms with.” Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen suggests that the language of metaphor is as natural as breathing in everyday life, “and her sisters—poetry and story” are as well. When she and her family experienced a difficult season she says, “Everything I felt during those dark days, the way I approached mortality, the way I prayed, the way I had to view the world, was in terms of metaphor.”

The movie Green Dragon helps audiences experience that level of force when lives are thrown into upheaval and tragedy, at almost a moment’s notice, and never to be restored as before but can be reconciled. One DVD jacket cover for the movie simply states: “A story from a war that has been forgotten. When Tai arrives at Camp Pendleton, he is confronted by a camp filled with despair.”

 Commissioned to translate for the refugees, Tai forms a friendship across cultures, and begins the healing for himself and his people. Multiple stories intertwine. In one thread, a lonely American cook teaches a young orphan to paint, bringing beauty into the stark surroundings. From devastation, loss, and grief come love, hope, and new beginnings that cross time and barriers. Art, in many forms, becomes the metaphor, which they learn to speak across their dark days, within themselves and across the many cultural/language barriers.

One skill to develop a language that crosses emotional and experiential boundaries, whether cultural, generational, or extraterrestrial, is to become fluent in abstract, especially with metaphoric ability—poet or not.

We can develop this language by looking for ‘poem seeds’ whether we actually write poems or not. We go behind the visible surfaces to find the meanings behind our words, our images and memories.

Action Steps:

Develop Images

List Poems

1. Write a list poem. This works well for non-poets to get past the inner critic and just write for fun. It also helps get us in touch with abstract concepts.

Choose one of the following words: hope, love, faith, trust, beauty and do a cluster brainstorm for it.

2. Now write up your thoughts as a list poem adding whatever new ideas rise to the surface as well. Keep writing the repetition in each line: hope is…, or I believe beauty…, or set up as a question; is love…, or can love be found in a …..?

3. Leave it alone for a day or two then come back. Now go down your list of images. Can you change each line into a metaphor?

For example: hope is ...a waterfall.   / Hope is a waterfall like rushing wind.

                                       / Hope is an hourglass waterfall.

Although you may not end up using the words themselves, the practice will help you connect to the emotion you want your situation to generate, whether in your character’s heart or your reader’s. Being able to identify the emotional flow enables you to write a richer scene.

Share: What word did you choose?

Read deep, marcy