Metaphors for Writing

There are many metaphors for writing but E. Shelley Reid presents metaphors that are not so vague or confusing. Instead, the metaphors she offers help further thoughts about writing and how to approach writing assignments. https://writingspaces.org/past-volumes/punctuations-rhetorical-effects/

One of my favorite metaphors used was referred to as using your higher brain. A lot of it to me was about not falling into traps. Even though it used timed writing as an example, it related to deadlines in writing like the ones I would see in journalism. Even though it is not a solid sixty minutes of timed writing, a deadline still can create some writer’s block, and thinking with your higher brain can get you out of that. Especially in journalism, I have found that it sometimes means ignoring the rules or knowing when to break them. To some extent, they can hold your writing back or at least prevent ideas from making it to paper that need to be articulated before they are potentially lost. The advice around it is simple but effective. Read the question, which in this case, is to find the problem or what the angle is. Finding an angle or problem is so important in any writing assignment. It is even more critical in journalism as well. Without your angle, there is no story.

Overall, there were many pieces of metaphors that rang true and seemed generally helpful to me. I also felt that even though they were generally helpful many of them were sort of common sense or already heard of in a way. For example, when the metaphor about annotating came up the entire portion of that was easy to understand but also seemed like something most readers and students already do and have been doing since late elementary school. Other metaphors like showing and not telling were also elementary. Except for the explanation and detail that made the take more refreshing. I think all students always are told to show and not tell throughout k-12 learning and writing but are seldom told what that looks or sounds like. So going from a small green ball to a golf-sized lime green ball that bounces back when it is thrown against a wall is the visual example missing when teachers would say tell me to show and not tell them.

Ultimately, metaphors for writing are useful and can be applied to your own current assignments. Reid’s article does well to express that there are many rules in writing but her metaphors can help to break them down in positive ways. Each of the metaphors to me is on a sort of spectrum. Much of what they are makes sense but may not always work for our own writing. But if you can tweak them and pull out the pieces that apply well then it can be useful.

If you’re interested in reading more about metaphors and those pesky rules, check out https://eng2020.chrisfriend.us/blog/process/process-metaphors/rivasmak/dont-let-the-rules-block-you/