When figurative language is bad

[sartorias]

The other day I posted Jane Austen's writing advice clipped from her letters to a writing niece. Afterwards, I got three different people writing me privately to ask, basically, what is so bad about figurative language

Comments

[serialbabbler]

Hmm... for me "a touch of anger colored his voice" and "anger colored his voice" actually do have slightly different meanings. "A touch" implies a lesser amount of anger. "He only sounded a little bit angry." as opposed to "He sounded like he was about to rip off my arm and beat me to death with it." Of course, you could argue that "colored" also implies a small amount, but it's more ambiguous to me. If I were going for a one word variant visual descriptor that sounded like a small amount of anger, I'd probably go with "tinged." as in "Anger tinged his voice." which these guys obviously don't approve of. :D

[sartorias]

Heh! Yeah, 'tinged' was definitely on the 'lazy writing' list--it came up a couple of times.

Other words that came up were 'shadow' as a verb when there are no actual shadows (X emotion shadowed his face) and 'shattered' as in hearts shattering, which doesn't even happen when a bullet enters it. Hearts being squishy, they don't actually shatter.

You get the idea.

[nipernaadiagain]

I would say not just slightly different, when talking about adding a touch of color or coloring something entirely ... like this:

[sartorias]

HEH!!!

[kalimac]

This only goes to prove that all language is metaphorical, or, if you will, figurative. Speaker D seems to think that "colored" is figurative but that "sharpened" or "tightened" or "roughened" or "thinned" aren't, since D is asking for something "you can actually hear." But they're all metaphors: sharpen is what you do to a pencil, tighten is what you do to a knot, etc. What they are is more specific metaphors than "colored." What color? Problem then is disagreement with color symbolism, red v. white in this case. But that can come up with the symbolism of other metaphors too. None of D's suggestions strike me as particularly problematic in that way, but it can happen, and when you least expect it

[sartorias]

Yeah, afterward there was some discussion, not quite arguments, about sharpened--at least I have a note here on "sharpened'? But D demonstrated a sharp voice. (Which someone else said could be expressed as 'barked' and there we get the said-bookisms

[serialbabbler]

I was thinking of "sharpened" in terms of musical notes. ("Sharp" versus "flat" that is.) So a sharp voice wouldn't be a bark so much as a high pitched (slightly off-key) angry voice.

Most of our descriptive language is synesthetic in nature. Trying to separate out the senses doesn't really work all that well although it does make for interesting conversations.

[sartorias]

Agreed! It's fascinating how different people experience the different words. (And seeing where there is general agreement about generic; words that go in and out of the Zeitgeist of a time.)

[dichroic]

I wonder if "very" in "his very heart" would have once sounded like "it was so funny I literally died" does today. I think in that usage it comes from "verray" meaning "true", as in "veracity" or Chaucer's "verray parfit, gentil knight". So when you say "his very heart", if that's a descendant of "his verray heat" it could be as meaningless as "his heart was literally touched" - imaginable as a phrase in bad writing but as you say, not likely unless surgery was involved.

[kalimac]

W.S. Gilbert once sent up the metaphorical use of "heart" thus:

Richard: Does your honour know what it is to have a heart?

Despard: My honour knows what it is to have a complete apparatus for conducting the circulation of the blood through the veins and arteries of the human body.

[sartorias]

Heh!

[sartorias]

Probably--and the word thus is leached of meaning. Like the word 'value' in advertising.

[queenoftheskies]

I'm guilty of using tinged, so I'm glad to know it's frowned on. Thank you for that information!

[sartorias]

Well, it is frowned upon by this group, anyway!

[asakiyume]

I don't frown on it! I wouldn't take any of this discussion as indicating that a word shouldn't be used. I think sometimes we write (and not just write, this happens when people speak, too) automatically; we just reach for off-the-shelf words and phrases, like TV dinners. And the thing is, potatoes don't have to just be cooked like instant mashed potatoes; there are lots of other ways to cook them, if you start from scratch. They can have all sorts of textures and can take all kinds of flavors. So, when a beta reader, say, urges a writer to use some other phrase, or whatever, it's because they think the original phrase is too commonplace or overused, and they want to get the writer to expand their repertoire. And that's cool. But I don't think it should mean that you can't ever use the stock phrase. Sometimes instant mashed potatoes are what you need.

[sartorias]

Yep. And especially in first drafts. I think of such words as scaffolding. They get the idea across, but if we want the piece to be a bit more memorable, on the second pass, is there a better way to phrase it? Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't.

[whswhs]

I have to say that I think writer B has things backward. His point about the uselessness of "very" is well taken. But what's going on with "his heart was touched" is not that it's figurative but that it has ceased to be figurative, in a fashion that happens constantly with language, to the point where nearly every word in the English language started out as a metaphor

[sartorias]

And I vaguely recall someone pointing that out from the audience--and if I recollect right, quoting Shakespeare. But 'very heart' no one defended.

[houseboatonstyx]

The sentence can be criticized for its use of the passive voice; there seems no reason not to say, "It touched his heart," or "Her words touched his heart," or "Her trouble touched his heart."

'It' usually needs an antecedent, and you've supplied a couple: 'her words' and 'her trouble'. But suppose several things are happening at once: her words, her tone, her appearance, his knowledge of her situation, her baby crying in the background, the overflowing basket of dirty laundry she was trying to finish, his memory of what her mother had said about something, his memory of their good times together, etc.

After a paragraph or two showing all this (plus a few chapters showing them having the former good times) to say "Her words touched his heart" or even "Her trouble touched his heart" would be a little flat, maybe. Or with all that going on would he focus on that detail, or even on a concept such as "her trouble"? So why confuse the effect by putting in 'it'?

(This doesn't fit with "It's raining" or "It seems to me", either.)