CHAPTER4

Energetic Figures of Speech

In This Chapter

  • Making substitutions with metonymy
  • Substituting with synecdoche
  • Bringing objects to life with personification
  • Making comparisons with metaphors
  • Showing simile com-parisons with like or as

Lock and load, friends!

Why did you throw her under the bus like that?

No one’s holding a gun to your head.

When read literally, these expressions are significantly violent and disturbing—especially since two of them reference firearms use. However, when interpreted as figures of speech (and fairly common ones at that), they lose their threatening aspects and assume the function of indirect avenues for ...

Get Creative Writing now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.