NPR’s Brian McConnachie (All Things Considered) last week issued round seven of his Vocal Impressions challenge, asking listeners to describe famous voices in metaphoric language. The current challenge is to describe the voices of Johnny Cash, Ethel Merman, Willie Nelson, and Roy Orbison.
If you haven’t checked out responses to his previous challenges, take a look. Some favorites:
- Morgan Freeman: “A voice too tired to hurry and too powerful to slow down” — Andy Mullins
- Truman Capote: "A screen door spring" — Jennefer Wright
- Patsy Cline: "The voice of the moon courting a shy earth" — Justin Balsley
- Jack Nicholson: "The bottle that told Alice, 'Drink Me'" — Andrew Criss
- Cliff Edwards: "The day before Christmas" — Bridget Rasmussen
- Sean Connery: "He sounds like the man who knows the outcome of the race before it's been run." — Greg Quagliara
- Mae West: “The last spit curl of the 20s." —- Carl Kuschhaupt
- Luciano Pavaratti: "Humanity taking a victory lap" — Bradley Niblock
- Elvis Presley: “Sunrise in the backseat of your boyfriend's '57 Chevy” — Barbara Gatsche
- Phyllis Diller: “A '60s sofa shredded by cat claws” — Heather Kuhl
- Celine Dion: “The way you feel after a really good haircut” — J. Noel Gardiner
Metaphors are lame when not used with subtlety. Although it’s not particularly helpful for the Vocal Impressions Challenge, I like Owl Online Writing Lab’s discussion of Creative Ways to Use Metaphors:
Most books give rather boring examples of metaphors such as my father is a bear or the librarian was a beast. However, in your poetry (and fiction for that matter) you can do much more than say X is Y, like an algebraic formula. Definitely play with extended metaphors (see above) and experiment with some of the following, using metaphors...
- as verbs: The news that ignited his face snuffed out her smile.
- as adjectives and adverbs: Her carnivorous pencil carved up Susan's devotion.
- as prepositional phrases: The doctor inspected the rash with a vulture's eye.
- as appositives or modifiers: On the sidewalk was yesterday's paper, an ink-stained sponge.
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8 comments:
I adore those Vocal Impressions descriptions. Interesting, new, and on the money! Raises the bar for my own lazy comparisons though.
Years ago, I came up with one I liked. For me, reading Donald Westlake's suspense is like watching a stranger tickle a baby.
Great stuff. I recently blogged about metaphors myself.
I'm a big Willie Nelson fan so I'm gonna have to think on that one.
Clare - Great one about DW's suspense. I'm gonna have to start playing this game, I think, just as soon as I can get a night's sleep.
Travis - Loved your blog entry, especially the excellent advice: "DO use the world you've created. Writing a western? Use guns, rugged terrain, dusty cowtown streets and the like for comparison, A Sci-Fi? computers the black emptiness of space, planets and such."
Lois -
Appositives are one of my favorite writing tools. In fact, I use them so often that I have to go back through my writing at times and remove them!
Hi Lois,
Terrific post and thanks for the introduction to an interesting site.
Terrie
Willie Nelson's voice is like having a beer with the small town steel workers in the parking lot after work on the tailgate of your pickup.
Jason! Did you submit that one? You've made my list of favorites!
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