This month’s writing yoga is a fun technique: build a mountain of metaphors.

Metaphors and their cousins similes (explicit comparisons) are wonderful tools in the writer’s toolbox, no matter what you write. They add imagery to our words. They help us understand new ideas by comparing them to existing knowledge.

Metaphors also create a sense of poetry.

The Exercise

Choose an abstract idea: democracy, freedom, happiness, summer, vacation, family.

Then, come up with a pile of metaphors describing the subject. Try for at least ten.

Dig deep and come at the topic from different areas: sensory images, things that you can smell or taste or touch. Include emotional situations. Think about moments in time. Create a rich variety of metaphors.

You may end up with a piece that is chaotic and unstructured, but also poetic and profound. It might sound like a poem or a song lyric.

This exercise loosens and stretches your metaphor-making skills, which are useful for all kinds of writing, not just poetry and song lyrics.

Give it a try this month and let me know how it goes for you.

A Few Examples

Read E. B. White’s riff on Democracy from The New Yorker (published during WWII.)

Here’s a quick metaphor mountain on the topic of vacation:

Vacation is listening to an audiobook on the road. It’s a roadside milkshake blended with chocolate, cherries, and anticipation. It’s sitting on a deck and staring at the trees. It’s that mystery you’ve been waiting to read. Vacation is drinking an iced coffee without worrying about falling asleep at night. It’s walking in the woods on a path you’ve never seen before. It’s warm breezes and sore legs, moon rises and star gazing.

Want to share yours? Leave it in the comments, or send it to me. With your permission, I may include a few in my newsletter.

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