If we brighten our writing and delight a reader, we can feel more confident that our message is getting through.
Many of you responded to my invitation to submit samples, from any source, of writing that delighted you. Some wound up in a subsequent column.
New York Times columnist Frank Bruni asks readers to identify such passages from the Times, and he shares them in his newsletter.
One of his readers cited a piece by Isaac Lozano, a California high school senior, who Bruni said "succinctly captured the ambient dread of life during the coronavirus pandemic."
Lozano wrote:
"Though we wash our hands and disinfect items after arriving home, I'm always left with a tingle of uneasiness — like sensing a mosquito in a dark room."
Can't you feel that presence? Haven't you had that experience?
Lozano brings it back by using a simile — a linguistic device that hinges on the word "like."
An effective simile must feel appropriate to the situation. The image of that mosquito suits the mood.
Here's a simile that fails: "The ballerina rose gracefully on pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant."
A cousin to the simile is the metaphor. Instead of saying one thing is like another, you flatly state what it is.
For example, here's how a New Yorker magazine article describes the journalist, writer and actor Anna Deavere Smith:
"Smith wears a dark, baggy jacket, and her English garden of loosely coiled hair tickles at her shoulders and clavicle."
The article does not say that Smith's hair is like an English garden; it says her hair is an English garden. That's a writer's mind at work, transporting a reader by creating an original image, more compact than a simile.
The writer next switches to a simile: "Her scrunched brows are like thin awnings over her eyes. …"
Awnings, an English garden, a lurking mosquito — all old, familiar images, but now delivered fresh.
I invite you to send me a simile or a metaphor that has delighted — or appalled — you.
Twin Cities writing coach and Emmy Award-winner Gary Gilson, who taught journalism at Colorado College, can be reached at www.writebetterwithgary.com.
