A great metaphor can do in six words what a paragraph of explanation can’t. A bad one makes me stop reading and wonder what the writer was smoking.
I pay more attention to metaphors than almost anything else when I read a manuscript, because they show me whether the writer was thinking or coasting. A good one makes the reader understand something faster than explanation could. A bad one makes the reader stop and work out what you meant, and a reader who has to stop enough times puts the book down.
What Does a Metaphor Do?
A bad metaphor makes the reader stop reading to figure out what you meant.Share on X
A metaphor compares two unlike things without using “like” or “as.” That’s the textbook definition, and it’s useless to anybody trying to write one. The practical definition is more useful: a metaphor takes something abstract or unfamiliar and makes it concrete by connecting it to something the reader already understands. For more, see plotter vs. pantser and the unreliable narrator.
“Time is a thief” works because everyone knows what a thief does. The reader instantly understands that time takes things from you without asking. No explanation needed. The metaphor did in four words what a paragraph of literal description would struggle to accomplish.
That’s the point. Metaphors compress meaning. They deliver understanding and emotion at the same time, faster than literal language can.
When do metaphors strengthen writing?
Metaphors are worth the trouble when they clarify something abstract. Everywhere else they’re usually showing off.
Emotions, relationships, psychological states, complex ideas: these are difficult to describe literally. Metaphor gives them shape. “He carried the conversation like a weight he couldn’t set down” tells the reader more about that character’s experience than “He found the conversation exhausting.” The metaphor communicates exhaustion, obligation, and the inability to escape, all in one image.
Metaphors also work when they reveal character perspective. Two characters describing the same city differently through metaphor tells the reader how each one sees the world. One character sees the city as a machine. Another sees it as a body. The metaphor does characterization work without the writer having to explain anything.
Metaphors are also effective at establishing tone. A narrator who describes a boardroom as “a cage” is telling the reader something different than a narrator who describes it as “an arena.” Both are metaphors for the same physical space, but each sets up a completely different emotional context for whatever happens next. The cage narrator feels trapped. The arena narrator expects a fight.
The strongest metaphors feel invisible. The reader absorbs the meaning without consciously registering that a comparison was made. “She hit a wall with the project” is so embedded in common language that most people don’t even recognize it as metaphor. That invisibility is the goal.
When do metaphors weaken writing?
Dead metaphors do the most damage, and they’re the ones writers defend hardest. “Hit a wall,” “light at the end of the tunnel” and “tip of the iceberg” have been used so often that they no longer create images. The reader processes them as stock phrases and skims right past. A page full of them tells me the writer stopped paying attention. If your metaphor appears in the first page of search results for “common metaphors,” find a different one.
George Orwell went after these in “Politics and the English Language,” published in the journal Horizon in April 1946. He called them dying metaphors and listed a pile of them, including “toe the line,” “Achilles’ heel,” “swan song” and “hotbed.” His evidence that writers had stopped seeing the images was simple: “toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line.”
His first rule for writers was “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” I think that rule holds up as well now as it did in 1946. A writer who types “tow the line” has stopped picturing anything, and the reader stops picturing right along with them.
Mixed metaphors. “We need to get all our ducks in a row before this ship sails” combines two unrelated images. The reader’s brain tries to picture ducks on a ship and the meaning collapses. Every metaphor creates a mental image. Two incompatible images in the same sentence cancel each other out.
Stacked metaphors. “Her words were a dagger, slicing through the fortress of his composure and setting fire to the bridge between them.” That’s three metaphors in one sentence, and it reads like a writer who couldn’t pick one. Dagger, fortress, bridge, and the reader can’t hold all three images at the same time. One strong metaphor per idea. If you need three metaphors to make one point, none of them is the right metaphor.
Decorative metaphors. Metaphors that exist to sound literary instead of to communicate meaning. “The dawn painted its watercolor across the canvas of the sky” is technically a metaphor, but it communicates nothing the word “sunrise” would not. Pull the metaphor out, put plain words in, and if nothing’s lost, it was decoration. Cut it without mercy.
Decorative metaphors show up most in writers who’ve been told their prose needs to sound more literary, and I think that advice does real harm. It teaches people to paint over plain sentences that were working fine, and the reader pays for every coat of paint in lost attention.
Forced metaphors. Metaphors where the comparison doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. “His anger was a symphony” fails, because symphonies are structured, composed, and deliberately beautiful. Anger is none of those things. The comparison creates confusion instead of clarity. A metaphor that requires the reader to ignore the ways the comparison fails is a metaphor that fails.
| Type | What goes wrong | Example from the post |
|---|---|---|
| Dead | So overused it no longer creates an image | “Light at the end of the tunnel” |
| Mixed | Two incompatible images cancel each other out | Ducks in a row before this ship sails |
| Stacked | Too many images for one idea | Dagger, fortress and bridge in one sentence |
| Decorative | Sounds literary, communicates nothing | Dawn painting watercolor across the sky |
| Forced | The comparison breaks under scrutiny | “His anger was a symphony” |
What is an extended metaphor?
An extended metaphor carries a single comparison across multiple sentences, a paragraph, or even an entire chapter. When done well, it creates a sustained image that deepens the reader’s understanding as the comparison unfolds. If a writer establishes a company as a ship, the extended metaphor might describe the CEO as the captain, market conditions as the weather, competitors as other vessels, and a failed product launch as running aground. Each element maps cleanly onto the comparison, and the reader builds a progressively richer understanding of the situation.
Extended metaphors die the moment the writer runs out of real parallels and starts forcing it. If the ship metaphor requires describing the accounting department as “the barnacles on the hull,” the metaphor has been pushed past its useful life. At that point the metaphor is a joke, and the writer is the punchline. Know when to let it go.
The test for an extended metaphor is the same as for a single metaphor, applied repeatedly: does each new element of the comparison clarify or confuse? The moment it confuses, stop extending.
What Is the Difference Between Metaphor and Analogy?
Extended metaphors die the moment the writer runs out of real parallels and starts forcing it.
Writers sometimes confuse metaphors with analogies, and the distinction matters. A metaphor states that something is something else: “The city is a machine.” An analogy explains how two things are similar: “The city operates like a machine: inputs go in, outputs come out, and when one part breaks, the entire system slows down.”
Analogies are explanatory. They’re useful in nonfiction when you need the reader to understand a process or system. Metaphors are evocative. They’re useful when you need the reader to feel something or see something in a new way.
Both have their place. Writers get this backward all the time, and it costs them.
Use a metaphor when you needed an analogy and the reader walks away with a vivid image and no understanding. Use an analogy when you needed a metaphor and they get a clear explanation that doesn’t move them at all.
How Do You Write Better Metaphors?
Start with what you’re trying to communicate. The meaning comes first, and the image follows from it. If you want to convey that a character feels trapped in a relationship, ask what being trapped feels like. Physical constraint. Limited options. Awareness that escape would cause damage. Then find a concrete comparison that carries those specific qualities.
“The relationship was a locked room” works if the character feels confined. “The relationship was quicksand” works if the character feels like struggling makes it worse.
Each metaphor communicates something different about the same general concept. The right metaphor depends on the specific emotional truth you’re conveying.
Test your metaphors by extending them one step. If “the relationship was a locked room,” could the character look for a key? Could they hear something on the other side of the door? If the metaphor holds up when you push it slightly further, it’s a strong comparison.
If it falls apart immediately, it’s surface-level decoration. Avoid reaching for the first metaphor that comes to mind. The first one is almost always a cliché, because clichés are everyone’s first thought. The second or third attempt is usually where you’ll find original metaphors.
My take
Throw out your first metaphor, because everybody else thought of it too and it’s a cliché. Decide what you want the reader to feel, then find a concrete image that gets that feeling across. Push the metaphor one step further, and if it falls apart, cut it. Extended metaphors need the same test at every step. Once the accounting department turns into barnacles on the hull, you’ve made yourself the joke.
Metaphor in Nonfiction
Metaphor isn’t a fiction-only technique. Nonfiction writers use metaphor constantly to make complex ideas accessible. Describing a company’s cash reserves as a “war chest” communicates strategy and preparation. Describing a market downturn as “falling off a cliff” communicates speed and danger. In memoir, metaphor carries emotional weight that literal description can’t. A memoirist describing their childhood home as a “minefield” communicates something precise about the experience of living there: the constant vigilance, the unpredictability, the knowledge that any step could cause an explosion. That single word does more work than a paragraph of explanation.
Business books live on metaphor. Pipeline, runway, bottleneck and ecosystem are all metaphors that have become so standard in business language that people forget they’re comparisons. Somebody coined each of those once and handed readers a picture of something they couldn’t see.
That’s the job. The writers who repeat them on autopilot are handing over dead metaphors, and a business reader deserves better than a book that sounds like every slide deck they sat through last quarter.
If you’re writing a business book, the challenge is finding fresh comparisons for concepts your readers think they already understand. The same principle applies to self-help and narrative nonfiction. Wherever abstract ideas need to become concrete, metaphor is the tool. Be precise: pick the metaphor that captures the quality you need, and keep looking if all it gets right is the general category.
Mixed and tired metaphors are everywhere because writers grab the first comparison that comes to mind and call it done. That’s the laziest habit in prose, because readers feel it even when they can’t name it. Throw the first one away and keep going until you find the comparison that says exactly what you mean.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Politics and the English Language, The Orwell Foundation
