There are lots of metaphors that have been so over used so as to lose all meaning. You know what they are, there probably is no point in repeating them here. Breaking hearts, love battlefields, our own emptiness...you know. Probably if they have been a part of the literature for the last 400 years, they should be abandoned.
At any rate, there are some exercises that you can do to help you create metaphors that don't totally suck and lull your listener into a coma.
Make some lists of nouns, and crash them together. Use your taste to guide you. Since I'm a completely lazy bastard, I would prefer to use technology to do this, so I can think about important things, like getting a job...so I've found ways to automate this process so I can choose to be stressed out by other things.
Last week, I spoke about two websites that I use to generate random nouns to help with object writings. In making metaphors, I use them also. Lets explore, shall we?
The first webpage I talked about last week was the Paper Tiger Random Noun Generator . It has a really basic interface, just a drop-down menu that lets you choose the number of nouns you want generated. Last week, of course, we were just using one generated noun to help us with choosing a subject for Object Writing. This week, let's see if we can get some interesting word visuals to happen. Let's start with making the generator generate two random nouns for us, like so:
Ok. This time, I was pretty lucky I got to an interesting pair in only a few pressings of the generate button.
Earthquake
Vinyl
So right there we have some fodder for interesting images from the friction created by rubbing two dissimilar ideas together: Maybe that Iron Maiden record you used to have was so great that when you put it on your turntable, it was a vinyl earthquake. Or perhaps the way she walks in those pleather pants is an earthquake of vinyl. Not bad. Try it. See what you come up with.
Last week's second webpage was a more inclusive Random Word Generator. Which is great for this week's example, because we can not only start slamming nouns together, but we can also slam adjectives and nouns together, verbs and nouns together, or adverbs and verbs together. Check it out:
The page if you'll recall is found here: Watch Out For Snakes Random Phrase Generator
Here, we are able to create a phrase made of random words up to four words in length. We are able to choose what part of speech we want to pull each random word from, and we are even able to choose how common we want those words to be. Here's an example:
In this example, I chose an average adjective for the first word, and a very common noun for the second word.
My yield was:
coagulate
concrete
So: I walked through the newly poured sidewalk on the way home, and by the time I had reached my front door, I had coagulated concrete all over my shoes. Not bad, but they go together a little too well, in my opinion....so I hit the New Phrase button again to get another pair.
This time:
unresting
justification
Ok. No matter how wrong your decisions are, you try to convince me they are right with your unresting justification.
It's kind of nice, but putting justification in a song may be a little much.
Anyway. Those are the tools. Go play.
What I did this week:
Finished the song we've been working on, two different ways and made a decision about which way is better.
Went to hang with one of my favorite people in the world, Commander Holyfield.
Found another song I started long ago, and started to work on it.
Played at an open-mic style songwriter's night. Played 6 songs and remembered all the words and most of the chords! Also heard three new people that were really good.
Oh yeah! Got ideas for at least one podcast....just have to figure out how to make that happen.
and looked for a job...some more....
Again, please go get Pat Pattison's books, they are well worth it: Writing Better Lyrics
Talk to you soon.
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