Title: The effect of a metaphor on your readers - Writers Online
Headings: The effect of a metaphor on your readers
The effect of a metaphor on your readers
Metaphor is a powerful tool for writers and poets but what effect does it have on your readers?
• ‘ All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’ – William Shakespeare
• ‘ Hope is the thing with feathers’ – Emily Dickinson
• ‘ The parents looked on Matilda in particular as nothing more than a scab’ – Roald Dahl
• Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life - Pablo Picasso
Is your mind a bud ready to bloom, your pen a fountain ready to gush? Time to get creative... what you know is magic.

Content: His use of metaphorical language gives us a beautifully vivid impression of a mind full of bright, sparkling ideas that will not coalesce into a pattern. • ‘ All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’ – William Shakespeare
Metaphor is a psychological as well as literary technique to help create understanding. For a writer, it is a way of using language to manipulate the way the reader responds. Metaphor allows a writer to control the way readers perceive what’s been written. A metaphor has the effect of showing a thing in a way that shines a new light on it (see, a metaphor about metaphors!) and a skilled writer can use it to illustrate a character’s viewpoint as well as illuminate the narrator’s point of view. • ‘ Hope is the thing with feathers’ – Emily Dickinson
Unlike simile (ie not ‘like a…’), which is a direct comparison, one effect of a metaphor on a reader is that it helps with ‘show not tell’. Metaphor, which allows writers to convey vivid imagery that transcends literal meanings, creates images that are easier to understand and respond to than literal language. Metaphorical language activates the imagination, and the writer is more able to convey emotions and impressions through metaphor. Metaphor expresses nuances for which no standard vocabulary exists, and entices readers to think in abstract ways.