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Imagery in Writing, or
When Words Have Their Designs on Us

Margaret Ruckert
 

Here are three ideas, not new, but dry-cleaned for a quick try-on:

  1. Figurative language is another name for imagery but ironically, no actual figures – numbers – are involved. Once you figure this out, you are well on the way to creative writing, which generally eschews mathematical detail for imaginative detail.
  2. The use of imagery links the known to the unknown, the unusual, but this unusual ‘something’ should be familiar to the reader. As an example, a claim such as ‘his alibi was like swiss cheese’, will only work if the reader has a taste for the holes in Swiss cheese.
  3. Imagery is often a pictorial phrase. Universal images include the ocean or earth as mother, the sun as a symbol of health. water as healer and bird as a spirit. These images can suffer from overuse and the best advice is to avoid language of the past as in ‘sublime bowers’, the ‘eye of the sky’ for the moon or ‘emerald carpet’ for lawn.

WHY USE IMAGERY?

Imagery allows you to satisfy the adage ‘show, don’t tell’. This phrase is one of the first encountered in creative writing workshops and one that will stay with you long after the last session. We all seem to be teachers in some ways, honing explanation skills, with the tendency to spell out exactly what happened, in order to reduce confusion. Show, don’t tell implies a difference between the two, which we are not only supposed to recognize, but also avoid. It becomes like the joke, don’t think of an elephant. And of course, in the confusion, we do. Imagery answers the question of how we can show, rather than tell, by using a subjective touch rather than an objective fact.

Confusion can also occur with narrative and the idea of ‘telling your story’. We don’t say ‘show your story’. When writing an advertisement for my recent book, You Deserve Dessert – Fact, Fiction & Fable, I used the fact that, at 124 pages, it has 50% more pages than most first poetry books. But the printed advertisement sounded flat. Something more elliptical was needed, like ‘a very generous serving of 124 pages.’ The difference is… straight fact versus an evocative phrase: showing not telling.

THE SIMILE

A simile is a comparison, not necessarily a poetic device but can be a logical device to announce a new piece of evidence or something unexpected. Early accounts of post-colonial landscapes make use of basic simile. This is like that. Reference to the known, for example by using English names, helped readers back at home visualize new scenes. In Australia, the Casuarina was called a ‘she-oak’, even though the species includes male trees, Tea-tree leaves could be used for a mild drink and possums were called ‘flying squirrels’.  

Once you become familiar with the simile, you will find it expands the scope of a text. One interesting example of an extended simile is used by American poet and song-writer, Keith Flynn, in his book of poetic technique, ‘The Rhythm Method’. He suggests that ‘Reading a poem in translation is like kissing through a shower curtain – you get all the thrust without any of the nuance’. The Australian poet, Dorothy Porter, made extensive use of simile to help readers hear the voice of the speaker, by inferring moods and fears. In her widely acclaimed Monkey’s Mask we hear on page 19 ‘my voice hearty/as beef tea’ and on page 76, ‘my voice tight as asthma.’

METAPHOR

Metaphor is an in-your-face suggestion, saying one thing is another. In one of the most researched poets on the Internet, ‘The Highwayman’ by Alfred Noyes, we read. ‘The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor/ And the highwayman came riding…’ So, the road wasn’t just like a ribbon, it was a ribbon. Turning a noun into a verb is another example of metaphor e.g. ‘so the cold can’t mouse in’. ‘He butterflied the lamb.’ The method of substituting an unexpected verb for a common verb immediately provides interest as in ‘light paints the wall’ or ‘shadows pool across the valley’.

PERSONIFICATION

Personification is specific type of imagery, a subset of metaphor. When objects animate, they react like living things, and create interest, similar to the animals of cartoon. Whitman’s ‘The sea whispered to me’ is a resonant example. In my book, You Deserve Dessert, cakes speak because they can (on paper). In a cake shop, they’d be silenced because they might give away too many cooks’ secrets. After giving us his recipe for life, Yogurt Pie cheerlessly reveals – ‘I can be frozen’.

By introducing imagery into your writing wardrobe, you will achieve an instant make-over. Turns of phrase will become phrases that turn on an image which will look, feel and smell fresh. From school-tunic to street-smart. Words will speak to you, in your size and style. Listen and be clothed in all the colour of the English language. When words have their designs on us, we know we’re having an effect.

EXCERCISES TO TRY

1. Suggest an ending for each of the following lines taken from Monkey’s Mask (Porter); the completions are given below but no peeking! And remember, there is no right or wrong, but only interesting.

the night air sneaks/ into my car window/ yowling like __________________________________________

fun fun fun/ I’m a mono Beach Boys record/ my heart breaks/ like _______________________________

Tianna/ looks like glandular fever/ and _____________________________________________________

(he) smiles as thinly/ as ________________________________________________________________

the dark jumps/ like ____________________________________________________________________

2. Take one object in the room/library/garage/ and describe it, using a variety of imagery. Nouns can be compared or a verb can be used in the comparison e.g.

the chair resembled a miniature throne
the chair sat dreaming, like a grandfather at a grandson’s birthday party
the chair discovering its legs, scuttled out of the room


Dorothy Porter's original similes are:

  • the night air sneaks/into my car window/yowling like an unfed cat.
  • fun fun fun/ I’m a mono Beach Boys record/ my heart breaks/ like surf.
  • Tianna/ looks like glandular fever/ and nicotine poisoning on legs,
  • (he) smiles as thinly/ as packet soup,
  • the dark jumps/ lik a funnel-web

About the AuthorYou Deserve Dessert

Margaret Owen Ruckert, a Sydney educator and poet, is a former TAFE Science lecturer.  A Distinction in Creative Writing in her Master’s Degree informs her current focus. She is a previous winner of the NSW Women Writers National Poetry Competition and has won many other awards. Poems and articles have been featured in Famous Reporter, liNQ, Blue Dog, five bells, Tasmanian Times, Hecate, ezines such as Cordite and anthologies.

 

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