Playing with those Metaphors

Presented here, with as little comment as possible, a lesson on using metaphors in writing, by Terry Pratchett; from pages 188-89, “Men at Arms.”

“[G]ive me some more coffee. Black as midnight on a moonless night.”

Harga looked surprised. That wasn’t like Vimes.

“How black’s that, then?”

“Oh, pretty damn black, I should think.”

“Not necessarily.”

“What?”

“You get more stars on a moonless night. Stands to reason. They show up more. It can be quite bright on a moonless night.”

Vimes sighed.

“An overcast moonless night?” he said.

Harga looked carefully at his coffee pot.

“Cumulus or cirro-nimbus?”

“I’m sorry? What did you say?”

“You gets city lights reflected off cumulus, because it’s low lying, see. Mind you, you can get high-altitude scatter off the ice crystals in – “

“A moonless night,” said Vimes, in a hollow voice, “that is as black as that coffee.”

“Right!”

“And a doughnut.” Vimes grabbed Harga’s stained vest and pulled him until they were nose to nose. “A doughnut as doughnutty as a doughnut made of flour, water, one large egg, sugar, a pinch of yeast, cinnamon to taste and a jam, jelly, or rat filling depending on national or species preference, OK? Not as doughnutty as something in any way metaphorical. Just a doughnut. One doughnut.”

“A doughnut.”

“Yes.”

“You only had to say.”

Harga brushed off his vest, gave Vimes a hurt look, and went back into the kitchen.

Pratchett is at heart a writer’s writer, who often explores odd little tropes of writing with enough exaggeration to point out how most of the rest of us are mucking things up.

I know I do it, and when I see something like this in my own writing I want to kill myself.*

And I see it a lot in others. Last year, I read a professionally-edited and nationally-published book wherein all of the characters blushed to show embarrassment. All of them. Even the dark-skinned characters. Which led me to wonder – when dark-skinned people blush, is it noticeable? If you can’t answer that as a writer, you probably shouldn’t use blushes as your go-to for your characters to express embarrassment.

And maybe it is noticeable. Maybe I’m the moron here. My own writing shows me clearly I can and often am wrong.**

*See? I’m doing it RIGHT NOW!

**AND AGAIN!