How To Write Metaphors In Poetry And Music

The reason we write metaphors is to enrich the meaning of what we are trying to express, give it more color, and have our readers create more of an emotional connection with what we are expressing. We can always convey ideas in ordinary language and at times that is simpler, but metaphors add another dimension to what we are communicating. With words, metaphors create powerful imagery in the minds of our readers and the readers connect with the visuals of ideas rather than our logical explanations.

Since Shakespeare is the best writer of all time, let’s look at an example of a metaphor written by Shakespeare. Here is a quote:

“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.”

This is one of the all-time great lines of writing and all literary history. The main metaphor and idea of this line is that love has many sad experiences around it. But if we say it that way, it’s unemotional and uninteresting. It’s clear that where there is love there is also breakup, longing, disappointment, longing, and many other negative emotions. But this is a boring and a long way to write. Shakespeare does all this in one line by using a creative metaphor.

If you want to write metaphors, here is a video tutorial on how to write metaphors with examples from Shakespeare and other great writers:

Here is another metaphor from my own writing that I didn’t think was great, but people like:

“Stuck in swamps of the mundane.”

My readers told me that they immediately connected with the idea of swamps of the mundane because it was relatable.

Steps You Can Take To Come Up With Your Own Metaphors

When you are trying to create metaphors, almost close your eyes and think about the imagery that comes to mind when you think of something. That imagery is the beginning of the metaphor you will create.

Another writing technique that might help you if no ideas come to you at first, think of various analogies or symbols that stand for the things you are thinking about.

Step One For Creating A Metaphor

For example, try to write about something you fear. Close your eyes and see what imagery comes up in “your mind’s eye” so to speak. For me, one of the images is howling wolves at night. That would conjure up fear if I was in a forest. For you, that image might be different. There can be hundreds of interesting metaphors for fear without expressing that you are afraid directly.

Step Two For Creating A Metaphor

I can think of dozens of visuals per concept. That part can be relatively easy. The next stem in creating a metaphor is to write your ideas down and test them to see whether you feel that they are interesting or overdone. Many images will not be interesting because they are quite overdone. You want to sift through your ideas and look for new and fresh perspectives on an idea you are trying to convey. This is a process of elimination. After taking out the uninteresting metaphors, you should be left with the cream of the crop images to choose from with which to create your metaphor.

Step Three For Creating A Metaphor

After narrowing your potential metaphors down, your goal will be to write out how you’d describe the image you are trying to convey. Your first draft won’t be pretty. The goal of the first draft is to just have something on paper. Once you’ve expressed it in a basic way, the next step is to edit and refine it until it’s short, clear, and connects with people. During this process, you can brainstorm it with other writers and show it to people to gather feedback.

If you liked the video above with a tutorial on how to write metaphors, and if you found this tutorial interesting, here is my full FREE course on how to write poetry:

Extended Metaphors

Extended metaphors are figures of speech that you create and build on. For example, you might say that a child is a shining star. They are not really a star in the skies. It’s a metaphor. This metaphor becomes extended if we use it later in our writing.

An example of that might be to say that the child is a star, and then go on about how this child lights up our lives and lights through all the darkness. Now that was just ok to start with, but it became more pretty as we extended it, and built on top of it.

You can also play with the extended metaphor by looking at how to accurately extend it. For example, we know that children tend to be innocent. So maybe it’s a star that doesn’t know that it is among darkness, all alone in a dark sky. Now that is a little more pretty as an image, and an even nicer thing to say about this child.

Implied Metaphor

An implied metaphor is a literary device created when you allude to a metaphor without actually stating it. For example, if we take the example from the previous section where we said that a child is a brightly shining star, in an implied metaphor, we would not say that directly. Instead, we might refer to a recognizable detail of the original metaphor like the fact that this child in the skies or surrounded by darkness or far from other stars.

Such an implied metaphor might work very well if you are describing a child who has been abandoned. You can say that she is too far from parent stars in space, and just floating without direction or guidance.

Songs With Metaphors

If you are writing music or are interested in listening to music with rich metaphors, here is an article where I go over songs with metaphors and provide an analysis of some of the metaphors in those songs. Similarly, here is a collection of songs with similes.

For example, here is a song of mine where I took a number of famous lines from Shakespeare (including the one mentioned above) and added to those lines into an original contemporary song. Shakespeare is known for writing metaphors that are some of the best in all literary history.

Another Song With A Metaphor: Guardians Of Souls

Obviously there is no such a thing as a guardian of souls. At least it’s not an official title. But there are some people who create inspiring music and poetry that positively affects our souls. In this tribute song to poets and musicians, the metaphor I made is that a poet is a guardian of souls. Poets are usually not fighters. But they fight a different kind of fight – a fight to inspire you and lift your spirits.

 

If you enjoy poetic music because it’s so emotional, and you enjoy exploring those emotions, here is a blog post where I attempt to explain the elements of music that make it so emotional.

More Poetic Songs

If you like poetic songs, here is a list of post with a collection of some of the most poetic love songs.

Here is a page with a collection of songs that have the most poetic and overall best song lyrics.

Here is my list of poetic songs with vivid and poetic imagery.

Poetry Book With Metaphors

I also created a fun and interactive way to listen to music and read its poetry at the same time. I compiled all my poetry and my translations of Russian poetry into a poetry book with songs in which each poem is accompanied by a YouTube link that has that poem as a song so you can hear how music really brings out the ideas of the songs.

Another Kind Of Metaphor: Mixed Metaphor

A mixed metaphor is when you take different metaphors and combine them. For example, you might say something like this: It’s raining cats and dogs. What we are interested in here is mixing of these two different ideas.

You can easily come up with many of these, and communicate vivid imagery in your writing. Just use your imagination and your heart. Your imagination and your heart will lead you to imagine symbols for things that will make anything more poetic, and make writing metaphors natural and fun.