Create New Metaphors

Objective: This activity encourages students to create new metaphors
rather than rely on the cliche phrases too frequently cited. Perhaps more
importantly, it focuses on matching up descriptive phrases, causing them
to begin looking at things from a fresh perspective.

METAPHORS (Taken from "The Inventing Writer")

To learn something new about anything that's familiar, we
need to see it differently, and nothing opens the eyes like a metaphor. A
metaphor is an implied comparison of two things, ideas, or states of mind
that may not literally have much in common.

A good metaphor is a comparison that hadn't occurred to us
before.

Thousands of metaphors form the stuff of everyday talk. Most
of these are little more than corpses of deceased metaphors, otherwise
known as cliches: "Chill out." "He thinks he's hot stuff." "She made a
mountain out of a molehill." "That expression is dead as a doornail." We
use old metaphors because they are so handy, but, of course, they have no
force and little explanatory value. (What, after all, is a doornail?)
George Orwell recommended never using a metaphor that we are used to
seeing in print (to which should be added, "that we are used to hearing
on the air").

The following is a method that can help you generate new
metaphors.

STEP 1. MAKE THREE LISTS
list I - 10 abstractions followed by the word "is"
list II - 10 specific things
list III - 10 adjective phrases
Example below:

List I - abstractions
1. Love is
2. Death is
3. Education is
4. Knowledge is
5. Religion is
6. Faith is
7. Power is
8. Sleep is
9. Work is
10. Play is

List II - specific
1. a wet hound dog
2. a popular song
3. a landfill
4. a black hole
5. a new Corvette
6. a frozen TV dinner
7. a circling vulture
8. an ancient temple
9. a melting Popsicle
10. a festering wound

List III - adjective phrases
1. waiting for its time.
2. old to the wise, new to the foolish.
3. silly to those who think, serious to those who feel.
4. needed only by the poor in spirit.
5. unused by all but the rich.
6. unused by all but the poor.
7. quietly known, unquietly felt.
8. strange in twilight, common in daylight.
9. barbarous to the truly civilized.
10. productive only of couch-potatoes.


STEP 2. CHOOSE ANY THREE-DIGIT NUMBER. (see 919 example below)
Start with the phrase from List I that corresponds to the
first digit Connect it to the phrase in List II that corresponds to the
second digit then phrase in List III that corresponds to the third.

Then, read the resulting metaphor.

Example: The number 919 yields "Work is a wet hound dog,
barbarous to the truly civilized."

Exercise 2: Take something very important to you and try to
imagine it as (1) a famous person (2) a plant (3) an animal (4) a machine
(5) a place.
Suppose that you have an old Volkswagen Beetle that you love,
and have driven for years. If it were a famous person, who would it be?
Danny DeVito, Jesse James, Roseanne Arnold? What kind of plant would it
be? A dandelion, A rose, An artichoke? What kind of animal? A bulldog, An
armadillo, (Someone has already thought of it as an insect so don't use
that) Suppose it were an appliance. Would it be a popcorn popper? And if
it were a place, enlarged in your mind's eye to the size of a house,
where would you visit first? Where would you prefer not to go? Once you've
come up with your images, write a paragraph on your favorite object,
using your newly created metaphors.

http://www.engl.niu.edu/sourcebook/II-1-11.html

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