Good morning!
And welcome to another Monday prompt!
Today, we’re going to play around with metaphors—heavy emphasis on the word PLAY.
You all know what a metaphor is already, but I’m going to put a few definitions down anyway for those of you who have a brain like mine—unable at times to pull up the simplest information when you need it. (“What is this thing in my lap??? It’s a… it’s a… [three hours go by…] … NAPKIN!!!”)
From the Oxford Dictionary:
“a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.”
And from Brittanica:
“a word or phrase for one thing that is used to refer to another thing in order to show or suggest that they are similar.”
And this from the marvelous Priscilla Long in her book “The Writer’s Portable Mentor”:
“A metaphor compares two things. Often it characterizes something abstract (memory, childhood, temper, death), by comparing it to something concrete (violets, volleyball, firestorm, tombstone).”
Okay, so now we all remember what a metaphor is. I’m not going to talk about similes here, but let’s just say that people often mix up a metaphor with a simile and that’s A-okay with me. (Okay, a simile ALSO compares two things, but uses a connector word such as “like” or “as” in order to make the comparison.)
A few examples of metaphor:
The classroom was a zoo.
Time is money.
All the world’s a stage.
He was a monster.
I thought of metaphors when I came across this story by Amy Cipolla Barnes , which I found online at SmokeLong Quarterly. It’s called “My Mother is an Abandoned K-Mart” and you can read it HERE.
If you read the story, you can see that Barnes goes all in with the metaphor. Full commitment. And that commitment to extend the metaphor all the way through makes it a lot of fun to read (though it’s also quite serious).
TODAY’S PROMPT
Today, we’re going to go all in with metaphor stories. In order to do so, I’ve written up the following list for you:
As you can see, Column One is what I’m calling a Concept, Column Two is an Adjective, and Column Three is what I’m calling an Object.
Instructions:
Your job is to take one word from each column and make your own metaphor. For instance, “My body is a used museum.” (You can leave out the adjective if you want: “My body is a museum.”)
Use that metaphor as the first sentence in your story. (Or use it as your title, if you prefer.)
Write your story, incorporating your metaphor in whatever way you wish. You don’t have to write an entire story based on the metaphor—you can just use it as a jumping off point. Then again, if you want to extend the metaphor all the way through, have at it!
If you don’t want to use my columns and prefer to make up your own metaphor, feel free.
Also, feel free to use “My mother is a…” as Barnes did. Or “My father is a…” Or “My ex-husband is a….” and so on and so forth, you get the picture.
Play with this week’s prompt. Try not to stress it! If your metaphor doesn’t work as Sentence Number One in your story, go ahead and bury it mid-way through. Anything goes!
Alternate prompt: Stamp collection.
As always, feel free to post up to 400 words in the Comments. If you write more, please post only 400 words of what you’ve written and summarize the rest. Thank you!
Love is a Dreamy Sunset
You've got to lose to know how to win he says to me, straight-faced but dead drunk, bare-chested, hip-bones pointing my direction, that delicate line of hair tracking from belly to button of his khakis. You’ve got to fly before you can swim, I say to him, my blouse unbuttoned, my skirt fluttering, my toes raking the wood floor. You’ve got to fold ‘em before you put ‘em away, he says, seeing he’s losing the game, and so quickly, but at the same time, those hip bones meaning he’s really already won. You gotta drink before you think, I say, taking a long, slow slug from the bottle on the floor. You gotta walk before you run, he says, too drunk for originality. You gotta know when to up the ante, I say, meaning I’ve left my underwear at home. He looks me up and down. He’s got a smile that comes once in a blue moon, grab it or it’ll move on. You gotta enter before you can exit, he says, reaching for me with his tanned arms, those fingers ragged from work. And that’s where it ends, him reaching toward me, me with no underwear, my thin skirt aflutter, him with those hip bones and those low-slung khakis, me on the verge of one more charming aside, but there he goes, riding away into the sunset, over and over again.
Memory is an empty Museum. That's putting it politely. We're in polite company, after all.
But, let's take a closer look, shall we, at Mind, Memory. Sort of the same thing. And let's say invoking an R rating for this comment, well that's just going to be ok. So, Memory is an empty Museum. Straight forward metaphor that. Inside the brain in question are armed guards, video cameras, busts of Caesar, a dinosaur penis bone, and a diorama of a mummified Nefertiti, a few docents. But no visitors looking at the exhibits, hence, the "empty." On the other hand an empty museum might be the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC after a flash mob carried everything away in hijacked Amazon vans. The mind is an empty Met, then. It seems we keep coming back to a mind of low voltage, perhaps a power outage, a branch fell on it or something. Maybe there's a better way to say it. As writers we're always looking for certain efficiencies, which could mean a lot of things, couldn't it. In this example though, I'm reminded of a lesson in a nutrition course which revealed the fact that in embryo, and therefore, too, back in the dim depths of evolution, our brains and digestive systems, (read in intestines, anus,) started out the same organ. That was news to me, and explained a lot about the human condition really, best summed up by my friend Sinbad after I related my findings to him over some wine one evening. Of course, he said, explains why so many are born with shit for brains.