Metaphor Schizophrenia
By Denise Loock Imagine yourself in an elevator with a stranger. She coughs several times, then blows her nose into a crumpled tissue and stuffs it into her pocket. Moments later, she pulls a few cough drops out of the same pocket and offers you one. Do you take it? Probably not. Who knows what germs are smeared all over it. Agents and publishing representatives don’t want to accept a disease-ridden manuscript either. Newer authors, and even some seasoned ones, submit articles and books that belong in a sick bed, not on an editor’s desk. Manuscripts can be infected with many maladies, but a common one is metaphor schizophrenia. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase denoting one kind of object or action is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them—an implied comparison. And who doesn’t love a memorable metaphor? God loves metaphors. He uses powerful images such as the sower and the seed, the lam...
