Recently, I've been seeing people say that metaphors and similes are a sign of ai writing.
Which may be true, but honestly, it's also a sign of human writing.
Of course it is. ai was trained on human-written text, and humans have, throughout the ages, used simile and metaphor to help others understand the meaning of what they're trying to convey.
We all have our own experiences and ways of looking at the world, but we can all see that ominous raincloud, or the sunny summer day, or whatever it may be, and go... ah yes, that makes me feel a particular way too. Now, I understand you a little better.
It's something I do in my own books - and will continue doing, much as I'm continuing to use dashes as liberally as I please - and have been doing right from the very start of the Lucas Rathbone Mysteries.
Well, perhaps not right at the start, but certainly within the first chapter, where we've got this:
Which may not be the first thing you think of when you imagine a metaphor or simile, but I'm claiming it is, even if it's a bit different how these things a symbol of spring would ususally be used.
Why do I still consider this a metaphor or simile or whatever, even though it twists how an apple blossom would generally be used as such?
Well, probably because I write mysteries so twists are my stock-in-trade, though perhaps I'm just not very good at using things like metaphor and pathetic fallacy and so on in the way they're typically used.
Which I'll talk about more in a sec.
And because I did this, you may think, "ah, that Saffron Amatti, terribly clever girl, choosing to set her book in spring, so she can use symbolic apple blossom", and I wish I was that clever.
But really, it was a bit of an accident.
A happy accident, of course, but I actually started the book just before Lucas's 24th birthday (which was 30th April 1928) for a few reasons:
One, I had to start it somewhere, and it seemed as good a place as any.
Two, I knew my plans for the series would be deeply hampered by snow and cold and so on, so getting going just as the weather was warming up again would make life much easier for everyone involved.
Mostly me, of course, as I'm liable to forget someone should put on an overcoat before running outside because it's December in London, and readers tend to notice things like that and leave snarky comments in the reviews.
Three, it means I have ample opportunity in upcoming books to use the rather uncertain English weather to my advantage, and impart a little extra meaning to my story.
Now, what do I mean by that?
If we look back a couple of decades to when young Saffron was sat in English class, that's where I, like my peers, learnt about the aforementioned metaphor and pathetic fallacy.
Well, I learnt about it, anyway. Pretty sure at least half the class wasn't listening, otherwise there'd have been more of a titter when my teacher quipped that a pathetic fallacy "wasn't what you thought it was."
Or maybe no one thought it was funny.
Or, maybe we were fourteen and it mostly went over our heads, and perhaps that's not such a bad thing, considering.
Anyway, both metaphor and pathetic fallacy are literary devices to echo, amplify, or foreshadow something about the plot, using something else as an example or "shortcut."
I'm a bear of very little brain who was more interested in doodling in her English exercise book than using it for its intended purpose, and can no longer remember the precise definition of either term, but I can still spot one when I see it.
And often, these things are relatively straightforward. Someone is sad, so it rains. Someone falls in love, and the sun comes out. That kind of thing, plus many more subtle examples that are so subtle, I can't think of them right now.
There's nothing wrong with this approach, by the way. I always appreciate a good sunbeam hitting a new love interest at just the right moment. It's just my mind appears to be wired upside down, as it apparently went, "ah yes, apple blossom. A symbol of hope and renewal. Let's use it to make Lucas even more depressed than he already is."
Similarly, but kinda opposite, I also took a thunderstorm in the following book, Sins of the Father, and instead of using it to symbolise misery or inner turmoil, I used it so underline a "breakthrough" moment:
And though I found two examples pretty quickly, this kind of thing is something I try to use sparingly.
I love a good metaphor or simile or whatever, but too much of a good thing gets old fast. It can feel cliched, or trite, or like you're trying to hit your word count and it's this or a rambling discussion about bread.
Or, it can feel like one of those damn robots wrote it, and we don't want that now, do we?
But my point is, when you spot something like this in my books, just remember that it may well be something you should pay attention to.
Not always, of course. I like to keep you on your toes, and often, a snowstorm is just there to make sure my characters can't escape the country house they're in when their hosts start dropping dead.
But sometimes, a well-placed raindrop or swirl of fog is more about indicating something to the reader, rather than merely "what happened."
However, all that is very nice for the author - very artistic, very creatively satisfying - but what does the reader get out of it? After all, that's who the book is written for.
Well, these hints, metaphors, similes, whatever, can act like a bit of a shortcut for a reader, as well as for a writer. But unlike the writer, who is hopefully smarter than I am and does this kind of thing on purpose rather than by accident, the reader may not even notice it's happening.
Many readers stick to a particular genre, and so already know a fair bit of what to expect. I read a lot of mystery (which should surprise no one), so I know there are going to be particular things involved, like:
- A mystery of some sort, probably a murder of someone who deserved their fate.
- A host of shady (and probably quirky) characters who want the victim dead.
- And, if you like cozyish mysteries like I do, you'll probably have an amateur sleuth, often alongside a policeman who is either an adversary or a colleague in investigating.
Because I know all that is probably going to be in a book before I even pick it up, I'm happy for the author to "shortcut" to the mystery with minimal description, world-building, or character development. I love some well-rounded characters, but even those that are well developed often end up falling into well-worn grooves.
Like the ruthless businessman everyone hates, or the downtrodden child of a pushy aristocratic woman, or a charming, handsome rogue with an eye for the ladies and not a single moral in sight.
There can - and definitely should - be nuances for each character to make the sterotype unique to that book, otherwise it gets incredibly boring, but using these archetypes helps both reader and writer hit the ground running.
Just so with the metaphors etc., it's a little shortcut to almost subconsciously reinforce what's going on in the scene, or foreshadow later events.
So, for all that people are saying metaphors and clichés are a sign of ai writing, I say that they're more than that.
They're a way of getting the reader up to speed quickly, so the plot can shine.
They're a way of adding extra depth and nuance to a scene.
They can be a little nod to the attentive reader, who may only pick up on it on a second read through.
But they are not a tell-tale sign of ai writing. They are a distinctly human thing, used across millennia to help us understand each other.
And regardless of what the robots are doing, we shouldn't stop using every tool in our belt to understand each other better, and to be understood, just because someone might think bloody ChatGPT or something wrote it instead of an actual human.
If we do stop using these well-worn literary devices, then we lose something handed down through the generations, something that's so ingrained in us we don't even notice it half the time, something that has allowed us to grasp someone else's experience of the world, to comprehend them better and perhaps learn something outside our ow limited experience of life.
As writers - and readers - we need to be alert to what may or may not be ai writing. But as we are, we need to ensure we don't lose the aspects of communication that help us connect with people whose lives we can never otherwise begin to imagine.
We need to keep our metaphors, simile, and pathetic fallacy, because as much as we want to understand others, we all use these things to be understood.
And without those devices, that will be so much harder.
Saffron Amatti is the author of two series of paranormal historical mystery books, the Lucas Rathbone Mysteries and the Beyond The Veil Detectives. She lives behind a keyboard in Derbyshire, UK, where she spends her time plotting murder and occasionally writing it down.