Metaphors Shake the Leaves

I'd love to have you in the workshop.

Basically we all understand what a story is. But I challenge you to define the word.

I've asked dozens of writers in workshops to define “story.” We have communally arrived at dozens of possibilities. But none say everything that needs to be said.

Lacking a Definition

Perhaps, lacking a static and satisfactory definition or a frame for story, we turn to metaphor.

A story is a what?

• A vessel.

• A harvest.

• A map.

• Medicine.

• A boat.

• A river.

• Novelist Gary Smith called story "the pipeline to the heart."

• One of the most beautiful metaphors comes from Wendell Berry. Stories are leaves. They fall all around, disintegrate, and turn into humus on the ground, which becomes earth. Take these stories, Berry advised, "and turn them into account." Berry said that a human community must "build soil, and build that memory of itself—in love and story and song—that will be its culture." Leaves build humus, stories build culture.

Leaves

Don’t you love that? You have stories. They fall to the ground around you. They make the soil that forms our culture. Your story nourishes. It’s fertilizer.

Story

By the way, I really love the definition of story written by activist and cultural creative Peter Forbes…

“the narrative of what has happened to us, shared in a manner that conveys what we believe in relative to those experiences.”

I would add, “and shared with the reader or listener in mind.”

Question

First thing you think of—what is your metaphor for story?

A story is a __________.

Let Metaphor—35 Writers So Far

On Nov. 2, 2024 I’ll be teaching a 2-hour-22-minute workshop on metaphor-making. That’s a Saturday morning. The workshop will be live via Zoom, meaning we’re all in a Zoom room together. If you’ve never used Zoom, I can help you master it.

The workshop costs $22.

Metaphors aren’t necessary. Examine the article or essay you read today and see if metaphor occurs. Often it doesn’t. But the best work pays serious attention to craft and contains metaphor—and on many scales, from the entire piece to the single phrase.

This isn't a writing workshop for all writers. This is a writing workshop for the writers who know, for a fact, that they are still learning craft and will always be learning craft, and who don't mind showing up for their writing. This is for writers who show up for a craft workshop because they're committed not just to the story but to the art of the story.

Leave with

• lists of metaphors

• new ways to find metaphors

• a handout of quotes about metaphors

• terminology you never knew about this technique

• some really amazing metaphors in world literature

If you want the info but can’t make the date—Nov. 2, 2024—I’ll make a recording available to you.

Register at Eventbrite.