The Art of Writing Metaphor

By Alyson Soko

I once titled a piece Stomach In Knots and Other Cliches. Laden with lots of old sayings—sweep it under the rug and knickers in a knot, as examples—my writing instructor wrote a comment beside the title, “Not in my class!”

Regardless, I submitted it to a writers’ event, and I was invited to read. Still, I agreed with my instructor. A cliché is a low-level device if there ever was one. And, as I’ve recently learned, clichés are indeed metaphors, however hackneyed and over-...