In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* On Simile and Metaphor
* Of Interest
Quote of the Day
“Life is like a dog-sled team. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” Lewis Grizzard (from Dr. Mardy Grothe’s Quotes of the Week. See Of Interest.)
On Simile and Metaphor
I’m pleased Dr. Mardy Grothe posted this particular essay today (see Of Interest) because in doing so he handed me a topic to play with. In turn, that enables me to pass along his post today instead of waiting until tomorrow in concert with the Bradbury Report, which I sometimes have to do.
Also, I’ve often said I believe the Question is the most important grouping of words in the English language, not because it leads to an answer, but because it leads to more questions.
As it so often does, Mardy’s post and the question he posed (“What Is Your Favorite Simile About Life?”) compelled me to Think. For example,
Note that to change the Quote of the Day above from simile to metaphor, Grizzard can’t simply omit the first sentence.
To complete the visual that’s central to the simile and the metaphor, he would have to write something like “If you ain’t the lead dog in the sled team, the scenery never changes.”
In other words, the skewed simile works because he sets up that visual in the first sentence.
The rest of this post is based on the comment I left on Mardy’s post:
As a fiction writer, I’ve never been a fan of simile when it makes a direct comparison. It’s always seemed better to me to omit the “like” and get on with a metaphor. To me, metaphor feels cleaner and less muddled.
The similes I DO enjoy are those that use what I call a skewed comparison, those in which the simile can’t be switched to metaphor by omitting “like.”
Back to Grizzard’s dog-sled team, for example. As I mentioned above, he can’t switch that to metaphor by discarding “like” because the actual comparison is not with the dog sled team itself but with your position in the team. Brilliantly done.
Also in Mardy’s proferred list, Schulz’s “ten-speed bicycle” (vs. riding a ten-speed bicycle) is also in that category.
Nitpicky? Oh my goodness yes.
Necessary for a professional fiction writer to consider and understand? Also yes.
In my personal second level of enjoyed similes are those that must remain similes because the “Life is like” phrase is necessary to the voice of the character (Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump).
If you want to see a true master of simile and metaphor at work in fiction, check out pretty much anything Raymond Chandler wrote. The guy puts King, me, and pretty much all other fiction writers to shame with his use of simile and metaphor and even description.
Me? I can’t use my own work as an example of a writer using simile. For me, using simile is like holding the reader down, sitting on his chest, and rubbing a comparison in his face because you’re scared to death he might take you literally if you use a metaphor.
I’d rather trust him to get it.
Of Interest
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Similes About Life & Living