this is soooooo vague, so excuse me since i can’t quite grasp what exactly i want to ask, but the gist is: i’m writing fic for the first time in like 10 years again, i’m having a lot of fun, but i’m also not a writer per se and never had any education in creative writing. i think being a very pragmatic person also doesn’t help, but that’s beside the point. looking at my draft right now i find it quite flat, i figure what’s lacking the most is metaphor, but even about that i’m unsure. how do you go about creating such meaty depth in your writing? it’s always so layered, kind of a marvel to me, i won’t lie
hi first of all YEAH to writing! yeah to writing and you haven't done it in like ten years! this was me two years ago completely, hadn't put words together in an intentional way since i was in highschool. also a scarily absent formal relationship to spelling and grammar, not a writer and yet. and yet. here you are writing so we must reinvestigate the definition of the word. ya sorry to tell you my friend legally if you're writing you are a writer.
i'm gonna answer your question for real and i'll also answer it for fake right here. i don't think you need metaphor. i have tried to stuff the slack mouths of my own flat-feeling fics with all the velvet petaled imagery in the universe and never has it really added any depth. look at that sentence. i wanted us to consider the flower-stuffed mouth, but for what? seconds later it is a nice picture disintegrating. it was different which leant it the assumption of being dense but it doesn't actually have weight because it didn't deliver us anywhere.
i wanna hear more about what specifically feels flat, but on a broad level, for me if it's flat it's because the character is absent. and not just character but, discovery within character? i have mostly found that transformation translates to the depth. writing really lets us burrow past the protective layers of social projection and aspirational selves we wear on the surface and get down to the genuine who. to show us not just who we are but who we wish we weren't? so i guess i like discovery to happen for the audience/writer first (the 'that's THEM' moment) then culminate for the character. that's what i mean by delivery; we can't just have nice scenery, i want to go somewhere.
and for my actual metaphor answer:
i'm working (not really) on something where they're roommates. they've lived together for years and shane has an enormous unrequited (......) crush, and i want him to sleep on the couch for a period of time.
my options to get him out of the room/on the couch are many. but then i have to peel the surface of this situation back and see what's underneath, how much it emotional weight it can carry for him. like, loud construction on a building across the street - this could work if i wanted to show that he's feeling left behind, too hung up on a guy who doesn't like him while watching the rest of his friends construct a real future. if there's a couple fighting loudly in the apartment below, that works if i want a way for him to reaffirm for himself that intimacy is too messy and not worth it.
but uncomfortable bed that hurts his back? this is my chef's kiss. first of all because i get to write about sensory stuff, sheets that were expensive but feel scratchy and make him sweat, mattress that seems both too hard and too soft - but mainly because i can switch back and forth between describing the bed when i'm really describing ilya, or describing ilya with the same words i've used for the bed. downy, rough, plush, firm, whatever. always there: comfort, always there: trap. i can have double-conversations where ilya asks shane about the bed: "since when?" and shane says, about ilya: "i don't know, i guess it's been like that for a while. maybe i just finally stopped being able to ignore it."
it works because it connects me not just to what shane's feeling but specifically what he's unable to let himself fully feel which is the main time i think metaphor helps. i'm sure i've said muddled versions of this before, but yes, i like metaphor as a way to show the approach/progress of a transformation even while the pov character actively fights being aware of it. the what's-going-on-underneath, basically. ideally it's a mirror that gives us a newly reflected angle of the story that the character can't see yet but will soon.
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