I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Last week I taught a class “Making Metaphors and Other Stylish Things.” We met in a classroom with blaring fluorescent light, and for two hours the room sunk into that delicious silence of making. (This type of silence, by the way, is one of the most profound silences that I’ve ever experienced. It never fails to move me and every time I teach, I go searching for it).
My love of metaphors has a long history, though I have to work hard to make them shine. “The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities,” wrote Jose Ortega y Gasset in The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture, and Literature. “Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when he made him.” It is one of the most powerful techniques that writers have to make the world new again.
So here I am with Plath’s sentence from The Bell Jar, practicing with you. In this time of giving thanks, I want to express my appreciation. Thank you, thank you, thank you for subscribing, for sharing your work, for sharing this newsletter with friends and colleagues, and for those who support me financially. The world feels overwhelmingly filled with difficulties and suffering, and this practice and this community of writers throw off a little light.
We become what we behold. —William Blake
The shimmer in Path’s sentence is the personification of the heart. The heart is allowed to brag, which is a human trait. Personification is the animation of the inanimate or abstraction and is a subset of metaphor. In Plath’s sentence, the heart is compared to a human, and, more specifically, the human capacity to speak. Plath amplifies the personification by having the narrator listen to the heart as if it is a separate being with its own consciousness. The “old” in “old brag” conveys that the heart has a history, a recurring state of feeling.
If you’re like me and fresh metaphors aren’t spontaneously spawned, I offer a possible strategy. Think of the world as divided into domains. In Plath’s sentence, there is the domain of human organs and there is the broader domain of humans in general. Then, you can break this down further. What are the properties of the human domain? Well, this can go on for a while: how humans move, eat, walk, talk, sleep, play, stand, laugh, cry, on and on. And each of these can be broken down further. Take, for instance, how humans move: walk, run, swim, skate, ride a bike, etc.
Plath further intensifies the personification with the second sentence and the iambic rhythm “I am, I am, I am,” (the heavier stresses in bold) mimicking the cadence of a beating heart.
Every metaphor or simile is a little explosion of fiction
within the larger fiction of the novel or story.
James Wood, How Fiction Works
Your Turn
Start with your subject and verb. Since you’re practicing, choose a human organ as your first domain. Compare it to the domain of humans in general. Choose an aspect of being human from this second domain.
Now add a period and write a second sentence. Can you use rhythm to further animate it?
How did it go?
What else do you see?
If you come across a sentence that dazzles, please send it to me!
Thank you again!
About Me:
I’ve taught “Style in Fiction,” “Word for Word” and “Cultivating Your Prose” at the University of San Francisco and Stanford Continuing Studies since 2007. Painters have paint; sculptors have clay. We have words, and words are sounds, and if you pay close attention to this, you can make music.
Please visit my website to find all of my books: ninaschuyler.com, including my novel Afterword, How to Write Stunning Sentences, and Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal.
Afterword News!
Afterword was named a finalist for the 2023 Best Book Awards by the American Book Fest in the category of General Fiction!
A Fantastic Review of Afterword!
“For Fans of Black Mirror and Klara and the Sun.”
“Schuyler truly pulls readers into a suspenseful and timely story, one that explores the dangers and unpredictability of advancing technology while also detailing a beautiful story of love, war, and sacrifice.”—BookTrib
For the full review:
Upcoming Reading:
Bay Area Folks! I’ll be reading at the Fairfax Public Library on November 30 with two lovely local writers. I’ve spent many hours writing in this library, which has fantastically comfortable chairs. No eating in the library, though.
Preorder My Award-Winning Short Story Collection:
I’m so happy that my short story collection, In This Ravishing World, will be published in July 2024. The collection won the W.S. Porter Prize for Short Story Collections and The Prism Prize for Climate Literature.
Nine connected stories unfold, bringing together an unforgettable cast of dreamers, escapists, activists, and artists, creating a kaleidoscopic view of the climate crisis. An older woman who has spent her entire life fighting for the planet sinks into despair. A young boy is determined to bring the natural world to his bleak urban reality. A scientist working to solve the plastic problem grapples with whether to have a child. A ballet dancer tries to inhabit the consciousness of a rat. It’s a full-throated chorus, with Nature joining in, marveling at the exquisite beauty of our world, and pleading, raging, and ultimately urging everyone toward activism and resistance.
I’d really appreciate it if you preordered the book. Here’s the link:
The Newsletter:
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Thank you!
Nina, our many thanks to you for these enlightening mini lessons!
Here’s my shot today:
Racing up the moonlit driveway of the mansion, she heard the screaming curse of her spleen. He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s dead!
An Early Draft
The Ballad of a Bountiful Bowel played by the old man’s rumble seat. Everyone heard the toot-toot and the whoosh that signaled the completion of the overture. A whoosh that was followed not unexpectedly by a whiff of funky fumes. There was no doubt the gas was flammable but a posted warning was missing.