Explore the base
Once you come up with an analogy, you can make more of your metaphor by extending it.
“If you want to try an extended metaphor, think carefully about your comparison entity,” writes Nancy Kress in Writer’s Digest.
“Choose something that is specific and concrete, like a diamond. Then jot down three or more similarities between that and your original object or situation. Finally, describe the latter in terms of the former, playing with the actual words until the comparisons are both clear and enlightening.”
1. Choose your base.
The more specific and concrete, the better. One familiar metaphor, for instance, is “Theories are buildings,” as in, “He constructed a theory.” Theories are the target; buildings are the base.
2. Explore your base.
Now delve deeper into the base to find more specific elements. In Metaphors We Live By, authors George Lakoff and Mark Johnson call this step finding “the ‘unused’ part of a metaphor.”
For “Theories are buildings,” for instance, you might develop a list of things buildings have. Maybe:
- Design, from Gothic to Bauhaus
Need help? Run your base through OneLook Reverse Dictionary.
3. Compare your topic to these elements.
Now construct metaphors comparing your topic to the items on your list. Lakoff and Johnson, for instance, came up with these extended analogies for “Theories are buildings”:
- “His theory has thousands of little rooms and long winding corridors.”
- “His theories are Bauhaus in their pseudo-functional simplicity.”
- “He prefers massive Gothic theories covered with gargoyles.”
- “Complex theories usually have problems with the plumbing.”
- “These facts are the bricks and mortar of my theory.”
This approach takes your writing from literal (“He has constructed a theory”) to figurative (“His theory is covered with gargoyles”).
Sources: Nancy Kress, “O My Luve’s Like A Red, Red Rose,” Writer’s Digest, February 2000
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago Press, 2003