1) I like the idea of using several thematic metaphors — say, water/river — in a single paragraph, or even a scene. As a humorist, I LOVE the surprising metaphor that catches everyone off guard. That’s how the rule of 3 in humor works — predictable item A, predictable item B, surprise item 3. I did that with my kids a few days ago, when we were talking about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I said their names were Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Jeff, which cracked them up.

So using a theme of metaphors is good, and creating the surprising one at the end would be funny. Going from river metaphor to river metaphor would be good, and then end it up with a desert metaphor or a dam metaphor, for example.

2) As far as “mixing” the metaphors go, that might be a little unsettling and noticeable. If you were using a water metaphor in one sentence and an ice cream one in the second, that could be a problem. “She flowed into the room, swimming through the crowd to the bar. Her sundae glass hips bumped against the dancers who melted on the floor to the music.” Campy writing aside, that’s a rather jarring usage of two different metaphors.

BUT if you sort of strung them together in a linear fashion of causality or time — rain clouds to rainstorm to river to bathtub — would be kind of cool.

Of course, keeping in mind that this doesn’t always work, because a lot of people don’t pick up on literary devices very well, and so it might be lost. It’s the literary reader who notices them, but I think a lot of people — me included — sometimes miss the symbolism and analogies authors work so hard to create.

Thank you for the kind words, Beedy.

This post was mentioned on Friendfeed by Erik Deckers: New post: Want to Make Your Writing More Vivid? Use Metaphors http://bit.ly/7A8MhB…