How to Create Visual Metaphors

In her book, Advanced Screenwriting, Linda Seger suggests that writers ought to do more than visually describe the specific world(s) of their story. They should also create visual metaphors. A visual metaphor is an image that connotes something over and above its denotative aspect – it carries an idea that resonates with readers or audiences on many levels. It forms part of an image system that informs and supports the story’s hidden meaning while at the same time helping to define its visual context.

Tom Jones

One of the most famous visual metaphors in film is the eating scene in Tom Jones. Ostensibly about eating, this scene is really all about sex – the spontaneity, rebelliousness, naughtiness of the carnal act, the excitement of going after the wrong woman, a metaphor for sexually devouring a lover’s body.

The Piano

In the film The Piano it is obvious that when Baines (Harvey Keitel) painstakingly dusts the instrument, he is not displaying his dedication to good housekeeping. His cleaning of the piano represents the woman he desires to touch, caress, and fondle.

Appropriate Construction

To work well, visual metaphors need to be adroitly constructed. Seger makes the point that eating a Caesar’s salad wouldn’t work as well as chewing on flesh and bone, in Tom Jones. Nor would dusting the piano with a rag be as effective as a naked Baines cleaning the instrument with his shirt. Choosing the right setting and detail of the visual metaphor is crucial to its communicating the intended nuance and meaning.

Visual metaphors may come in any form: broken glass may represent a broken life; blood can symbolise life or death; a mirror might represent the theme of illusion and deception, or a shattered persona. Shakespeare often uses visual metaphors to shed light on a story’s hidden meaning – a tortured soul surrounded by rain, thunder, and lightning in King Lear; the murder of a king causing imbalance in nature – as in Macbeth, where horses are reported to have eaten each other. Whatever the metaphor, however, the net result is the same – conveying information over and above the denotative aspect of the scenes in which they occur.

Summary

Visual metaphors point to the inner meaning beneath the surface of a story. They help support the story in an economical way by providing denotation and connotation in one seamless package.

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