A Little Action
When people think of metaphorical language, a lot of times the natural tendency is to speed right into he realm of poetry. But metaphors and similes can easily be called into the world dominated by fast and furious action without a single threat of intellect. Similes seem to work better than straight-up metaphor, however; probably due to the intellectual absence of ambiguity inherent in the comparative construction:
“Inej was startled by the girl’s speed. Dunyasha moved like painted light, as if she were a blade herself, cutting through the darkness, her knives slicing in tandem, left, right.”
A Little Philosophy
Still, intellectual stimulation seems to be the hallmark of metaphorical imagery. The comparative quality of the simile may occasionally inform and enliven an action sequence and do so to the point that it draws attention to itself. Less attention-grabbing is putting that as/like technique to use in allowing a character furious if not fast contemplative intellectual reflection:
“Lunch,” Jesper said, repeating the word as if he’d just learned it. “Yes, lunch. Who doesn’t like lunch?” Lunch felt like a miracle.
When Realism Sounds Fake
Discourse and dialogue is not usually the domain of metaphor. This seems odd because metaphor is such a pervasive element of human language that it is the person who fails to indulge metaphor that stands out. But for some reason, this very conversational part of human conversations is not nearly as pervasive in fiction as one would expect. Maybe because when it is used, it often tends toward the stilted use of allusions that sound less than realistic in written form:
“Zoya used to say that fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return.”
Seriously? Who talks like that in real life? Well, almost everybody, actually, but for some reason it doesn’t sound so stagey when it’s consumed in the fires of the everyday vernacular.
Self-Motivation
There is one very precise and specific area of intellectual stimulation where metaphorical imagery dominates but is usually overlooked. And that area is self-motivation. Motivational speakers whose job is to get you self-motivated to continue their strategy for success so that you continue purchasing their latest motivation products realize it. Selling self-motivation is all about creating metaphor and succeeding at self-motivation is even more so. It’s almost as if anyone who cannot see themselves in affirmative figurative forms is doomed to fail:
“For a moment, she was fourteen, being tossed into the hold of a slaver ship, frightened and alone…She was Inej Ghafa, and she would not quiver like a rabbit in a snare… The room was pitch-black, and all she could hear in the silence was her own rapid breathing as panic seized her again. She’d leashed it by controlling her breath… Long ago, after a bad fall, her father had explained that only fools were fearless. We meet fear, he’d said. We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear arrives, something is about to happen.”
Intellectual Action
Another example of simile in the service of action reveals how the intellect can work in a fast and furious motion on the rapid response of seemingly unthinking action. In the first example above, the metaphorical imagery is considered after the act itself; it is metaphor applied external to the action. In this example, the imagery is situated within the action itself as the result of a split-second intellectual decision:
“The mercenary lunged deeply, slashing out, but this time, Inej did not let herself follow the instincts she had fought so hard to learn on the streets of Ketterdam. Instead, she responded as an acrobat would. When the swing was coming at you, you didn’t try to avoid it; you went to meet it.”
