The best way to think of a metaphor is that it's taking two normally unrelated ideas, finding something they have in common, and then mashing them together through their common element.
Let's look at an example: The smell of rotting food invaded my nostrils While this line engages the sense of smell, it's also a metaphor because of the word "invaded.
" In the literal sense, a smell is incapable of invasion.
It's just a smell, not an army.
But when we think about the idea of "the smell of rotting food" and the concept of invasion, we can link them together because they both share the same idea of going where they're not wanted.
So if you were writing this line and you got stuck at "the smell of rotting food," you can then ask yourself "what does an unwanted smell do?" At that point you'd probably throw out an idea like "gets where it's not wanted.
" Then you can ask yourself "what else has that quality?" At that point, you'd land on "invasion," or maybe some other cool metaphor.
Let's look at another example: I'm pregnant with ideas Clearly, you can't literally be pregnant with ideas.
You can only be pregnant with a child.
But when you mash together "pregnancy' with "ideas" through their common link, you get a metaphor.
When someone's pregnant, they're carrying something inside them that will soon come into the world to take on a life of its own.
An idea also has that property.
That's what links them together and makes that line work as a metaphor.
If you were looking to come up with a metaphor for the word "idea," you'd first ask yourself "what qualities does an idea have?" If you decided on "it's something that's inside you, until it leaves and takes on its own life," then you can get to "pregnant with ideas" as a metaphor.
Let's look at one more.
Then you can start coming up with your own.
His loneliness echoes inside him What's the common ground between loneliness and echoing? Time's up.
It's emptiness.
Someone who's lonely is likely to feel empty, or not complete.
At the same time, echoes are created when there aren't any barriers to absorb sound.
In other words, they happen in empty space.
So emptiness is the linking element that allows "His loneliness echoes inside him" to work as a metaphor.
Try coming up with a few of your own metaphors right now.
Think of two random items and force them into a metaphor by finding any element that links them together.
I guarantee you'll have fun doing it, plus you'll probably come up with some cool lines you can use in your lyrics.