3 easy-chewing fruits to instantly turn your writing juicy
Want to make your points stickier and more impressionable?
Tie them up with something which the reader is so familiar with that he can feel it like the beating of his heart.
Because he knows in his bones how hard is a rock, he will quickly grasp what’s it to have a rock-solid confidence. Because he knows like the flow of his blood how pure is the morning dew, he will better understand it if you liken it to a lady’s tears.
Branching out from the same tree of comparison, metaphors, similes and analogies are 3 fruits of language, as old as expressions. They’re figures of speech, so anchored in our daily talks, that we don’t even notice that we’re pulling them out. If sprinkled with care, they add juice and flavour to the prose.
But if they get in the hands of those who know not how to use them, they’re like blunt blades that don’t trim the grass neatly – instead they make it look untidy.
Talking about the difference between metaphors and similes:
A metaphor says A is B, while a simile says A is like B.
For example, when you say she was a mountain stream, you’re using a metaphor. But when you say she was like a mountain stream, you’re using a simile.
One more difference between metaphors and similes is that the former isn’t purely logical because it says that a is b, though as per true rationality both can’t be the same. Tom is a tiger. This is a metaphor, though it’s clear that Tom is a human and tiger is a beast and therefore they can’t be the same. However, the implicit meaning is that Tom is powerful and brave.
If using a simile someone has to convey the same impression, he would say – Tom is like a tiger. This feels more logical because it doesn’t say that a human is a tiger, which is factually incorrect. But a man, because of his bravery and power, can be like a tiger, and thus the comparison encapsulated in this simile carries more logic.
When we remove like, as, than, similar to etc., from a comparison, it becomes a metaphor.
Compared to similes, metaphors are used more extensively.
Another figure of speech, branching out from the same tree of comparison, is called an analogy. An analogy says what A is to B is what C is to D and so on.
For example, rust is to iron is what laziness is to human. What fire is to wood is what envy is to peace. What wings are to birds is what confidence for the successful. Time to youth is what clouds are to summers.
“Reading to the mind, what exercise to the body.”
“As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.”
Used judiciously, these 3 figures of speech can turn a bland prose into a thrilling one.
A droning piece of text transforms to sweet music when interlaced with these figures of speech.
These figures of speech are like spicy toppings on a vegetable mash.
What colours are to paintings are what these figures of speech are to prose.
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