Metaphors

So, as promised, an answer to a question I get often: why write about werewolves? Why not make up my own creature? It’s usually non-writers asking this–a writer, I’d say “Because that’s not the story I want to tell” and they’d nod, but I’ve been a bit stuck when it comes to answering the question for anyone else. Here’s what I’ve figured out. I choose werewolves in specific (and urban fantasy in general) because metaphors are so much better when they’re only one explanation deep.

That, of course, needs its own explanation. So here goes.

I went contra dancing for New Year’s Eve, and I encountered several people who didn’t know what contra dancing was when I talked about it later. The answer is that contra dancing is a lot like English Country dancing crossed with square dancing. What’s English Country dancing? Well, have you ever watched a Jane Austen movie? What they do in the movie is English Country. The other night, I encountered someone for the first time who’d never seen a Jane Austen movie. At that point, my metaphor was three explanations deep and I was sinking fast.

I actually explain contra dance in that order for the comedic timing. Otherwise I’d lop out the center explanation, and cross Jane Austen movie dancing with square dancing and be done. But it illustrates my point nicely that you can dig yourself into a turtles all the way down hole with explaining something using something you must also explain with something else. Usually it comes down to judging your audience. I’d tell you guys that my writing process is like watching a YouTube video on a slow connection, but I won’t say that to my grandparents.

For me, the werewolves in my novel are the first and only level of explanation in my metaphor. Say what I want to explain, or in this case the story I want to tell, is about the feeling of being an outsider. When I say “Being an outsider is like being a werewolf living among humans”, that metaphor usually succeeds at one explanation deep because a good number of people know what a werewolf is. On the other hand, if I made up my own creature, I end with something like “Being an outsider is like being a Fizzbutt in human society. And a Fizzbutt is kind of like Fizzgig in the Dark Crystal, only bigger. If you haven’t seen the Dark Crystal–” And you get to the end of that, and finally everyone’s on the same page, and you realize that half the people have forgotten completely about outsiders, which was your point.

That’s not to say that I don’t think people should make up Fizzbutts. If your goal is that you want to share this awesome creature you’ve come up with, you lop off the top level of the metaphor stack right there. It’s just that I’ve found that for me, when my goal is to talk about outsiders, not to talk about my awesome creature, it’s much  easier to leave out the awesome creature.

That’s my philosophy on a lot of genre conventions in general. What’s your goal to talk about? What’s the top of your metaphor stack? If your goal is to show a new, more awesome version of what the conventions usually do, break every one! But when I want to tell a story about playing with faith or gender roles or something, genre conventions are a quick, easy first level of a metaphor that everyone knows. That way, they can understand my explanation quickly, and get right back into the part of the story I want them focusing on.