Songwriting Without Boundaries (28 page)

Wheezing exhaust, the traffic shuffled along, its stooped shoulders resigned to waiting.

KRISTIN CIFELLI:
Honking

Trumpet
: blare, toot, symphony, ducks on a pond

The traffic plays a symphony of horns, honking, in three movements that seem never-ending.

Go ahead and list three qualities of traffic.

Asking, “What else has that quality?” look for nouns, verbs, and adjectives related to your qualities, and apply them as usual. Write a sentence or a short paragraph for each one.

DAY #13

PLAYING IN KEYS:
FINDING LINKING QUALITIES

Again today you’ll respond to two prompts. List at least three qualities for each prompt, and for each quality in your list, ask, “What else has that quality?” and look for related nouns, verbs, and adjectives and apply them as usual. Write a sentence or a short paragraph for each one.

Here’s the first one:

Handshake

CHANELLE DAVIS:

strong

gestures peace

congratulates

What else has that quality?

Sumo wrestlers
: Fat, sweat, heavy wrestling, locked in, gripping

The businessmen shook hands, sumo wrestlers gripping each other tightly, each trying to tip the other off his feet.

White flag
: wind, peace, flapping, cloth

The handshake is a white flag, flapping briefly in the winds of peace.

Gold medal
: shine, first place, winning, sports event, race

The handshake was a gold medal at the end of a long race to win the development contract.

ANDREA STOLPE:

fingers clasping

confident

final

What else has that quality?

Lovers
: honeymoon, naive, poetry

A handshake is lover’s poetry, fingers clasping in a honeymoon of beautiful imagery.

A lawyer
: argumentative, bends truths, secretive

A handshake argues with the confidence of a lawyer, overruling anyone who might challenge its final word.

A parent’s word
: strict, non-negotiable, must be obeyed

A handshake parents an arrangement with a strict and unwavering decree.

Now, go ahead and list three qualities of a handshake.

Asking, “What else has that quality?” look for nouns, verbs, and adjectives related to your qualities and apply them as usual. Write a sentence or a short paragraph for each one.

Okay, here’s your second noun:

Sunrise

CHANELLE DAVIS:
It’s slow

What else has that quality?

Rosebud
: petals, unfolding, bloom, scent, bees, pollen, stem, leaves, garden

The sunrise began as a tiny bud, slowly unfolding its petals of red light into the morning sky.

CHARLIE WORSHAM:
It ignites

What else has that quality?

Match
: explode, burn, set fire, flame, scratch, sulfur, cardboard box, cigarette, flicker

A sunrise is the strike of a match: that first burst of light exploding in the atmosphere, setting fire to the day.

SUSAN CATTANEO:
It’s beautiful

What else has that quality?

Princess
: golden hair, silk gown, dainty slippers, eyes flashing, full red lips

The sunrise lifted her dainty skirt and tiptoed over the mountain, placing one satin toe of light into the darkened valley.

Your turn. Go ahead and list three qualities of a sunrise,

Asking, “What else has that quality?” look for nouns, verbs, and adjectives related to your qualities, and apply them as usual. Write a sentence or a short paragraph for each one.

There’s nothing mysterious about finding metaphor. It’s a step-by-step search that yields positive results in most cases. Expressed identity is a great diving board, plunging you into a pool of possibilities. Simply keep your eyes open under water. There are lots of things to see.

DAY #14

SIMILE

Before moving on to the next challenge, you’ll take a look at simile.

You learned in high school that the difference between metaphor and simile is that simile uses
like
or
as.
Of course, it also uses
than.
True enough, but that’s like saying that measles are spots on your body. They are, but if you look deeper, the spots are there because a virus is present. There is something more fundamental going on.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge called metaphor “an act of the imagination,” whereas he relegated simile to “an act of fancy.” He identified the difference between metaphor and simile as a difference of degree, depending on how much the two ideas shared in common. If they shared only a few, simile. More, metaphor.

This would be a candidate for simile:

Like a lobster boil’d, the morn

From black to red began to turn

—SAMUEL BUTLER

A boiled lobster doesn’t have much in common with morning except that they both change from black to red: The morning sunrise reddens the sky, the boiled lobster turns from black to red as it cooks. Metaphor wouldn’t work here:

Morning is a boiled lobster

The boiled lobster of the morning

Morning’s boiled lobster

While in metaphor, the two terms share several qualities. It’s perhaps a good guideline for choosing between metaphor and simile, but I prefer making the choice in terms of commitment.

Love is a rose.

Where do you focus? On the second term?

Love =
rose

Or the first term?

Love
= rose

If you want the texture, smell, color of the rose in focus, use metaphor.

Love is a
rose
.

If you want love as the focus, use simile:

Love
is like a rose.

Simile doesn’t transfer focus:
like
works as an energy blocker—it reflects energy back onto the first term, refusing to let the energy pass to the second term. The
is
of metaphor allows free passage of energy to the second term, and lights it up.

Freedom is riding a bike for the first time without help.

The energy is transferred to the bike rider here. You see her wobbling down the sidewalk, a breathless parent smiling and gasping as he watches her pull further away—a harbinger of things to come.

Freedom is like riding a bike for the first time without help.

Here you stay focused on the concept of freedom. Maybe you reflect a bit on the feeling you had when you first rode your bike alone, but muttering the conclusion, “Yup, that’s what freedom is like.”

Simile is an excellent tool for working with abstract concepts like freedom or emotions like hope, trust, or bitterness. A way of making them specific. Of course, metaphor is a perfect vehicle for those purposes, too.