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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26875
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26875
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

It is better to be a straightforward as possible in all descriptions. The aim is to form an image in the reader's mind, and the simplest language that does that is the language you should choose, since to do more risks the reader getting stuck in the thicket of words and not receiving the intended image.

The reason we sometimes use metaphorical language is that literal language does not always do a good job of evoking images in the human mind. For example, there are these famously bad lines from Wordsworth:

> Not five yards from the mountain-path,  
> This thorn you on your left espy;  
> And to the left, three yards beyond,  
> You see a little muddy pond  
> Of water, never dry,  
> I've measured it from side to side:  
> 'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.

A set of dimensions hardly accomplishes the poetic purpose of calling an image or an emotion to the reader's mind.

If we say that a bull was a big as an elephant, it is because giving the measurements of the bull in feet and inches would not convey to the reader the image of a really large bull. Comparing it to something imposingly big, like an elephant, however, immediately brings an image to the mind.

The danger with metaphorical writing, however, is that you can get drunk on the sound of the words and end up with purple prose. The thing about purple prose is that the reader receives it a prose: as a pretty sequence of words, not as an image.

I think it is worth noting here that "image" in this context should not be interpreted simply as "picture". I think we can create image of other things in prose: images of emotions, for instance. This is image in the sense of thing imagined, and we can imagine anything that we can experience. We can experience emotions, so we can create the image of an emotion. This is part of what give prose a wider dynamic range than video.

Original score: 2