So when making metaphors I select images that will be popular with tweens and teens. So how do you make a metaphor? When trying to come up with effective metaphors consider. When they do, I’m thankful! But more often than not I have to spend time making metaphors and intentionally inserting them into my manuscripts.

I love finding just the right metaphors when I’m writing. Keep reading and you’ll find more!Īuthors who succeed in their craft have usually learned to embrace metaphors as a way to bring the reader visual images in a unique way. You can probably walk over to your bookshelf right now (like I just did), pull out any published novel and find a metaphor on the first or second page. Without exception I found metaphors within the first two pages of each. I went to the best sellers section of the library and looked at about twenty books. Once, while trying to impress upon my students the importance of metaphors, I conducted a little experiment. When I teach writing courses, I’m often surprised at how much time my students have spent creating excellent characters and story-worthy problems and how very little time they have spent bringing their language alive through the use of metaphors and other types of figurative language.

Perhaps ironically, comparing unlike things, like butterflies and lace above, encourages a more precise visual image than a string of words that simply describes the edge of the swallowtail’s wing as black with white dots. Our readers are only able to see that the yellow swallowtail’s wing is edged with black lace if we say it just so.Īs most of you know, a metaphor is a figure of speech that compares or associates two unlike things. Website | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | Indie Bound She lives with her family in Beaufort SC where she teaches writing courses for children and adults.

She blogs year round at Nerdy Chicks Rule. A former educator, Kinard co-founded Kidlit Summer School Nerdy Chicks Write. Prior to the publication of her novels, she was published in some of the world’s best children’s magazines including Ladybug, Babybug, and Jack And Jill. Kami is the author of The Boy Problem: Notes and Predictions of Tabitha Reddy (Scholastic 2014) and The Boy Project: Notes and Observations of Kara McAllister, (Scholastic 2012). Author Kami Kinard visits the lecture hall today with advice on one of those brushes, and how we can make the most of our metaphors. Writers paint word pictures-very large word pictures-and to do that, we need every shape and size brush we can find. By Kami Kinard, of the How They Do It Series

The Boy Project by Kami Kinard