This page contains metaphorical questions that will help you produce more ideas, perceptions, and feelings about a topic. These questions will help you see more aspects of what you want to write about and also see the limits or blind spots in your accustomed point of view.
Suppose, for example, you are preparing to write a case study or report or essay about someone you have known or worked with. "Describe ----- as two people and tell how these two people work together (or don't work together)." "What would never happen to ----- ? If it did, what would be the result?" "Describe as a bad person." "Tell the three or four most important sounds that come to mind in connection with ----- ." If you try quickly answering these questions about someone you know, you will figure out things you didn't know or only half knew before. Your new impressions need not all be accurate, however, to be useful. When you let yourself describe people as bad, you may discover for example that the vague disapproval you've always felt toward them is really part of a deep but only partly conscious prejudice in you that comes from old feelings or attitudes. Or that you've never forgiven them for not inviting you to that party ages ago. The free writing helps you see around such impediments and thus see more accurately. These questions are generally most useful when you first begin your thinking and writing for some writing task. You need not write down long answers to all the questions. Often a phrase will do. Some items, however, such as perhaps "Describe ----- as bad," will set you off on an important piece of writing. The main thing is to make sure that after you have answered a set of questions you plunge immediately into as much fast raw writing as you can manage to do. Answering the questions puts you in a condition where you have more ideas and insights than usual. These are also exercises in metaphorical thinking. If you use them regularly you will gradually increase your creative and imaginative capacity. ( Aristotle was right when he said that metaphorical ability is a mark of intelligence but wrong, I think, when he said it could not be learned.) Every metaphor is a force-fit, a mistake, a putting together of things that don't normally or literally belong together. A good metaphor in poetry or any kind of writing is also somehow graceful and just right. ( William Carlos Williams starts a poem: "Your thighs are apple trees/whose blossoms touch the sky.") But the questions here and the answers you give needn't be graceful or just right. They should in fact wrench and violate your accustomed way of thinking about your topic. Perhaps, for example, you are analyzing an organization, say Acme Packaging or the C.I.A. The question asks: "If, in addition to French-kissing, there were Acme Packaging kissing (or C.I.A. kissing), what would that kissing be like?" Perhaps Acme Packaging kissing is kissing a sheet of paper and sending it through inter-office mail. Would C.I.A. kissing consist of quick hard hugs once every two months, making sure not to look at each other? Your answer may seem immediately useful, it may seem meaningless, it may suggest something you already knew perfectly well, or it may make you notice a half-conscious perception and then go on to find words for it. Perhaps you are writing about why Shakespeare begins Hamlet with the ghost-on-the-battlements scene, and the exercise says "Pretend the pump needs priming." "How then," you must say to yourself, "is pouring water in a pump to make it draw like starting a play with this scene?" Various answers will come to mind. The first one that occurs to me is that Shakespeare puts us off balance in the opening scene (you can't tell what's happening the first time you read or see it) to get us ready to experience uncertainty as one of the main underlying feelings and themes of the play. I find it a play which refuses to settle down or be clear. But the main usefulness of these questions won't come from just one of them, no matter how lucky the insight you get from it, but from a whole succession of them: twisting and stretching what you are trying to write about by mapping it against a variety of terrains-seeing a variety of possibilities in it. The next item for Hamlet, then, would be "Imagine the problem of the opening scene as a problem of defective materials." What comes to my mind first is to wonder whether there might be a problem of availability of actors. Is it something about having to start with Bernardo, Francisco, Marcello, and the ghost because of some complication growing out of actors taking two or more parts? Or were these actors needed to do things backstage next scene? It doesn't seem to make much sense, but it's fine to settle for farfetched or ridiculous answers to these questions. And don't be held back by lack of data. You are mind stretching, not trying to be sure. But then in the midst of these fumblings another more immediately fruitful thought strikes me. The audience is defective material. Some members of the audience are probably still coming in when the play starts. Others would not yet have shifted full attention to the play from the business of their day or from their conversation with companions. This scene has a certain amount of power to capture audience attention -- its mystery and drama -- but more important, probably, is the fact that the scene is a bit expendable. If it takes half the scene for some viewers to get around to paying good attention, they are not penalized, they don't miss something they need for comprehending or enjoying the play. That seems a useful thought. Next item: "Too many cooks." Too many actors? I tend to be confused by the people running around in the beginning of the play. Too many writers? Could others have collaborated in writing this scene? Was it a suggestion from one of the other actorshareholders that Shakespeare could not turn down? Could it have been a popular ghost scene from one of the earlier versions of Hamlet or some other play? The metaphorical questions often don't give you answers, but rather make you ready to look at more kinds of answers. The trick in answering one of these questions is to force yourself to come up with something without spending too long. And then go on to the next one. That means making things up and sometimes producing nonsense: cartwheels of the mind. If it takes you more than a minute or two, go on to the next one anyway. Not to worry. You may find it impossible to answer all the questions in a set. But you do need to bring to these questions a spirit of entering in, pretending, playing. (If that work of art you want to write about were your body, where would you find its head, hands, feet, heart? If it were a car, where would you find the motor, the muffler?) If you can't enter into the spirit of these questions, it is probably not worth struggling. But before you conclude that the questions are too silly, think about the fact that you engage in the same kind of far-fetched metaphorical thinking every night when you dream (even if you don't remember). Your ability to make rich and creative metaphorical connections is there ready to be brought under more conscious control.Sometimes you will notice the significance of an answer right after it comes to you. ("Hmm. Freedom is round. Does that mean I take it for granted that freedom is perfect?") But often it's better not to seek interpretation as you are answering the questions. It can make you too self-conscious, too interpretation-hungry so that when you are asked to think of your organization as a method of poisoning you can only follow a path of conceptual translation: "Let's see, what opinion do I have of my organization? Now what mode of poisoning does my opinion remind me of?" That misses the leverage in these questions. Best if you can let a poison float to mind without having to think about it. Perhaps the poison that comes to mind seems totally irrelevant in itself, but when you think of it in conjunction with some other seemingly ridiculous answers, you find a new and valuable insight about the organization. Indeed your answers will fertilize your raw writing even if you never work out their implications consciously.. . .I have divided these questions up into sets and phrased them to fit particular writing tasks as follows: | | a. Questions to help you write about someone you have known or worked with. | | | b. Questions to help you write about someone you have studied or | | | | read about. | | | | c. Questions to help you write about someone's life as a whole. | | | | d. Questions to help you write a self-evaluation. | | | | e. Questions to help you write about a place. | | | | f. Questions to help you write about an object. | | | | g. Questions to help you write about a work of art. | | | | h. Questions to help you write about an organization or group. | | | | i. Questions to help you write about a problem or dilemma. | | | | j. Questions to help you write about an abstract concept. | | | | | |
Many of the questions in one set can well be applied to a different writing task. My groupings are sometimes arbitrary. You will find that some questions particularly suit your imagination and are especially fruitful for you on almost any enterprise. You will also find it helpful to start inventing your own questions.a. Questions to help you write about someone you have known or worked with (for example, you have to write an evaluation or a letter of recommendation or a case report, or perhaps you simply want to understand someone better). | 1. | What would ----- 's face tell if you knew nothing else? | | 2. | What would ----- 's body tell if you knew nothing else? | | 3. | What would ----- 's posture and gait tell you if you knew nothing else? | | 4. | What would ----- 's manner or style tell if you knew nothing else? | | 5. | ----- 's name is the name of a color. What color? | | 6. | ----- is an animal. What animal? | | 7. | ----- is a food. What food? | | 8. | Who would play ----- in a movie about her? | | 9. | ----- 's brains are not in the head, heart not in the chest, guts not in the belly. Tell where they really are. | | 10. | ----- is two people. Describe them and how they work together or don't work together. | | 11. | ----- is really a spy. For whom? What assignment? | | 12. | If you were going to spend a year in close contact with ----- , where would you prefer it to be and under what circumstances? What would be the worst place and circumstances? | | 13. | Imagine that you believe all character and behavior comes from imitating significant "role models" when young. Who and what sorts of people do you suppose ----- imitated? | | | 14. | Imagine you are a kind of Platonist/Pythagorean/Buddhist who believes souls are reincarnated over and over again as they work their way gradually from being a vegetable to being a pure spirit. Where is ----- in this cycle? What previously? What next? (You slip backwards for bad behavior.) | | | 15. | Imagine you are an extreme Freudian who believes that all important behavior grows out of unconscious feelings -- usually sexual or aggressive. Give a quick interpretation of ----- 's behavior and functioning. | | | 16. | If you were writing the history of the sounds you've heard while being with ----- (excluding words), what would be the three or four most important sounds in that history? | | | 17. | Imagine you think ------ is a very good person. Now describe | | | 18. | Imagine you think ------ is a very bad person. Now describe ------ . | | | 19. | What is something that would never happen to ----- ? Imagine it happening? What would be the outcome? | | | 20. | Imagine an important situation when you were with ----Close your eyes and try to bring the experience back. Now pretend to be ----- and describe that situation. | | | 21. | What weather does ----- bring into the room? | | | | | |
b. Questions to help you write about someone you have studied or read about (for example, a politician or historical character or person in a work of art). | 1. | Describe ----- as an ordinary person. | | 2. | Describe ----- as a unique and special person. | | 3. | Imagine ----- were the opposite sex. Describe the life that would have lived. | | 4. | Describe the life ----- would have lived in a very different era. | | 5. | Make up or guess the most important childhood event in ----- 's life. | | 6. | Describe ----- 's life if that event hadn't occurred or something entirely different had occurred. | | 7. | Tell a science fiction story with ----- in it. | | | 8. | Tell a soap opera plot with ----- in it. | | | 9. | What does ----- most need to cry about? | | | 10. | Imagine you are very angry and strike ----- . How and where do you strike? | | | 11. | What is the caress that ----- most needs to get? | | | 12. | Give an accurate compliment that ----- probably never hears. | | | 13. | Imagine ----- 's hair were entirely different from how it is or was. What would it bring out that you hadn't noticed before? | | | 14. | What's a secret about ----- that ----- hasn't told anyone? | | | 15. | What's something about ----- that even ----- doesn't know? | | | 16. | How would ----- 's mother or father describe ----- ? | | | 17. | How would ----- 's child describe ----- ? | | | 18. | Describe ----- as a good president of the U.S.A. A bad president. What would be the important policies or decisions in both cases? | | | 19. | Tell a recurring dream that ----- has. | | | | | |
c. Questions to help you write about someone's life as a whole. | 1. | Describe ----- 's life and character as essentially unchanging. What may look like changes are really just ways of staying essentially the same. | | 2. | Describe ----- 's life and character as essentially determined by important changes or turning points (even if it looks to most people as though no such changes or turning points occurred). | | 3. | Imagine you believe people are truly free: they somehow choose or cause everything that happens to them. Describe ----- 's life or character. | | 4. | Imagine you have the opposite point of view: people are not free, they are determined by events they cannot control. Describe ----- 's life or character. | | 5. | Find as many rhythms as you can in ----- 's life: events that repeat or recur whether the scale is in moments or years. | | 6. | What events in ----- 's life only occurred once? | | 7. | Describe ----- as primarily a product of national, cultural, and ethnic influences. | | 8. | Describe ----- as primarily a product of personal and family influences. | | | 9. | Describe ----- as primarily a product of economic and class influences. | | | 10. | Describe ----- as essentially the product of conditioning. What behavior was rewarded and what was punished? | | | 11. | Describe ----- 's character as a solution to past problems. | | | 12. | Describe ----- 's character as carrying the seeds of future problems. | | | 13. | Think of two or three very unlikely professions or occupations for ----- . Describe ----- in those professions. (For example, describe Napoleon as a poet.) | | | | | |
d. Questions to help you write a self-evaluation(for some job or enterprise or life period). | 1. | Who will play you in the movie about this period or enterprise? | | 2. | What was the predominant weather for this whole time? Or what changes occurred in the weather? | | 3. | Think of yourself as having done a wonderful job. What do you notice? | | 4. | Think of yourself as having done a terrible job. What do you notice? | | 5. | Take responsibility for everything that went wrong. You did it all on purpose or because you didn't give a damn or because you were mad. Explain the events. | | 6. | Tell the three most important moments in this period. | | 7. | What did you learn from each of those moments? | | 8. | What qualities in you did this period bring out? | | 9. | What qualities in you remained hidden or unused? | | 10. | Imagine this period as a journey. Where did it take you? Where did it start? | | 11. | Imagine it is only a half journey, you are only halfway there. Where? What is the second half of the journey? | | 12. | Imagine this period as an interruption or detour or setback in some larger journey. What is that larger journey and how does this function as a time-out? | | 13. | If this enterprise was work, describe it as play. Or vice versa. | | 14. | Imagine this enterprise turns out to have very different goals from the ones you expected. Imagine some of these surprising goals. | | | 15. | Invent a dream you might have about yourself in this enterprise. Just use what first comes to mind. It doesn't have to make sense. | | | 16. | Imagine this whole enterprise was a dream. What is it a dream about? What will you wake up to? | | | | | |
e. Questions to help you write about a place. Go to this place in your imagination. Pick a particular time of the year and of the day. See it, feel the weather, hear the sounds. Make contact for a few quiet moments. | 1. | How is your mood affected by being there? | | 2. | Imagine being there for a whole year. How would that make you better? How worse? | | 3. | Imagine you have just seen, in only five minutes, the whole history of this place since the beginning of the world. Briefly tell this history. | | 4. | Imagine your body is the whole world. Where on your body is ----- ? | | 5. | If someone said "It's a ----- day," what kind of a day would it be? | | 6. | Imagine you have always been blind. Describe your place briefly. | | 7. | Let the place describe you. | | 8. | Your place is an animal. What animal is it? | | 9. | Your place is a person. Who? | | 10. | Name a story, a song, and a movie your place reminds you of. | | 11. | What is the first thing that comes to mind which your place would never remind you of? | | 12. | What other place does your place make you think of? | | 13. | In what weather is your place most itself? | | 14. | Some places have a proper name all to themselves -- like " Chicago." Other places only have a general name they must share with similar places -- like "bathroom." Give your place the opposite kind of name from the one it has. | | | 15. How does this new name change things. (For example, how | | | would your feelings be different? What things would you notice now? What would you not notice now? Would things happen differently there now?) 16. Find as many of your place's rhythms as you can. (For example, find things that happen there at regular intervalswhether they happen every second, every month, or every thousand years. Or any other sorts of rhythms you notice.) | | | 17. | Name as many things as you can that only happen there once. Are there any rhythms among any of them? | | | 18. | Think of your place as if it were old and near death. Now tell what place it was when it was only a child. | | | 19. | Think of your place as if it were a young child or young animal. Now tell what place it will grow up to be. | | | 20. | If " ----- " stands for the regular name of your place, what does the following sentence mean: "If you do that again, I'm going to ----- you"? | | | 21. | Imagine your place was the whole universe and you had always lived there. Tell how you and your neighbors explain the beginning of the universe. How do you folks think the universe is going to end? | | | 22. | Think of your place as if it is carefully planned in every detail. Now describe it briefly from this point of view. | | | 23. | Think of your place as if everything just happened by accident, chance, and luck. Describe it from this point of view. | | | 24. | Think of your place as if it is haunted. Tell about it (for example, how it became haunted; what it does to people it doesn't like). | | | 25. | Imagine an anti-universe where everything is opposite or backwards from the way we know it. Describe your anti-place in this anti-universe. | | | | | |
f. Questions to help you write about an object. | 1. | Think of a particular moment in which this object was meaningful or important to you. Close your eyes and take yourself back into that moment. Bring back the reality of the object and the scene for a few moments. The time of day. The time of year. The air. The smells. Your feelings. | | 2. | If you had never seen the object before, what would you notice when you first looked at it? |
| 4. If you knew it better and longer than anyone else -- if you knew it closely for a whole lifetime -- what would you see when you looked at it? | | | 5. Tell two or three different ways you might take it apart. | | | 6. Tell what it's like to take it apart and then to take apart the parts till you get down to its basic ingredients. (Go fast. Don't worry.) | | | 7. Imagine a different world in which this object was made of completely different ingredients. What would they be? Tell the advantages and disadvantages of this new arrangement. | | | 8. Tell how this particular object came to exist. (Not this kind of object. That is, if you are talking about a pencil, don't tell how pencils in general came to exist. Tell how this particular pencil came to exist: where it was made; where the wood, lead, and rubber came from; how they came to be put together.) | | | 9. Pretend it came to exist in a different way and tell what it was like. | | | 10. Tell the history of this particular object since it first existed. | | | 11. Tell its history for the last five minutes. | | | Tell how this kind of object came to exist (for example, pencils in general). | | | 13. Tell another story of how this kind of object came to exist, but this time make the story a kind of a love story too. | | | 14. Think of as many ways as possible of grouping a whole bunch of these objects. (In the case of pencils, for example, by length, by color, chewed/unchewed, free/paid for, by color of lead, etc., etc.) | | | 15. Think of a lot of different ways it is actually used. | | | 16. Tell three ways it might be used, but isn't. | | | 17. Tell a mystery story of how it came to be used in one of those ways. | | | 18. Tell three ways it could not possibly be used. | | | 19. Tell a science fiction story of how the world changes in such a way that it is used in one of the ways you just called impossible. | | | 20. If this object were an animal, what animal would it be? | | | 21. If it were a person, who would it be? | | | 22. | If it could speak, what would it tell you about yourself that you weren't aware of? | | 23. | Tell three things it might stand for or remind you of. (For example, a pencil might stand for a tree, school, or writing.) | | 24. | Imagine you are much richer than you are and think of something it might stand for. Imagine you are much poorer than you are and think of something it might stand for. | | 25. | What might it stand for if you were much older than you are? Much younger? | | | |
g. Questions to help you write about a work of art. | 1. | Pretend you made it. Something important was going on in your life and you poured strong feelings into it. What was going on? What were those feelings? | | 2. | Pretend you made it, but nothing special was going on in your life and you had no strong feelings. Describe what you liked about this thing you created. | | 3. | Pretend you made it and are very dissatisfied. Why are you dissatisfied with it? | | 4. | You made it as a gift for someone you know (a real person in your life). Who? How did she feel about your gift? | | 5. | Imagine this work of art as medicine. What is the disease? What are the symptoms? How does this medicine cure it? | | 6. | Imagine this work of art as poison. It destroys whoever experiences it. Describe the effects of this poison, the course of deterioration. | | 7. | Imagine that everyone on the globe owned this work of art or all infants were repeatedly exposed to it. What would be the effects? | | 8. | What is someone most apt to notice the first time she encounters this work of art? | | 9. | What would you notice about this work of art if you had never encountered any other works in its medium (any other novels, movies, ballets, or whatever)? | | 10. | What tiny detail in this work says more about it than any other? | | 11. | Is this work male or female? | | 12. | What other work of art would it marry? | | 13. | What works of art do they have for children? | | | 14. | Imagine this work of art as part of an evolutionary process. What work did it evolve from? What work will it evolve into? | | | 15. | This work is the only human artifact transported to Mars, the only evidence they have about humans. What guesses or conclusions would they reach about humans on the basis of this work? | | | 16. | Imagine your work of art as evolving into different media (Poetry, novels, movies, paintings, music, ballet, etc., etc.). Describe two or three of these new works of art. See what these evolutions tell you about the original work. | | | 17. | High art/low art: describe ----- as though it were in the opposite category from the one it usually occupies. (For example, describe Paradise Lost as a soap opera.) | | | 18. | Anonymous folk art/signed art made by individual artist: describe ----- as though it were in the opposite category from the one it usually occupies. (For example, describe a tribal chant as though it were a Beethoven symphony.) | | | | | |
h. Questions to help you write about an organization or group of people. | 1. | What animal is ----- ? | | 2. | What are the rhythms in the history of ----- ? Events or cycles that recur, whether on a scale of decades or days? | | 3. | What are some of the things that have only happened once to ----- ? | | 4. | What are the three most important moments in the history of ----- ? | | 5. | ----- is alive, chooses, acts. Describe its behavior as completely conscious, willed, deliberate. | | 6. | ----- has feelings. What does it feel now? What is the history of its feelings? | | 7. | If there were two of, ----- , where would the second one be? How would they interact? | | 8. | Imagine ----- is a machine, like a car or a pinball machine. Describe how it works. (For example, where is the motor? the flipper?) | | 9. | What is the most important part of the machine? Which part breaks down most? | | 10. | Map ----- onto your body: where are the head, feet, hands, ears, eyes? | | | 11. | Imagine all organizations had the same structure or mode of operating that ----- has. What would be the effect on the world? | | | 12. | What human qualities does it bring out in members? Which ones does it suppress or fail to use? | | | 13. | If in addition to French-kissing there were ----- kissing, what would that kind of kissing be like? | | | 14. | Describe ------ as a poison; its effects; its antidote. | | | 15. | Describe as a weapon. How do you make it go off? What does it do? Who invented it? | | | 16. | Think of ----- in the scheme of evolution. What did it evolve from? What is it evolving toward? | | | 17. | What physical shape is ----- ? Imagine that shape in locomotion: how does it move? | | | 18. | Think about ----- as part of an ecological system: What does it depend on? What depends on it? What does it eat? What does it emit? What eats it? What emits it? | | | | | |
i. Suggestions to help you write about a problem or dilemma. | 1. | The pump needs priming. | | 2. | Defective materials. | | 3. | Too many cooks: a committee designed or executed it. | | 4. | A bribe will do the trick. Bribe whom? With what? | | 5. | The problem is that God is angry. At whom? Why? What did that person do to make God angry? | | 6. | It's a problem of addiction. Who is addicted to what? | | 7. | The problem has been stated wrong. Find two or three ways of stating it differently. | | 8. | The problem comes from bad data. Guess what data are wrong and why? | | 9. | It's a Gordian knot: stop trying to untie it, cut through it with a sword. | | 10. | The problem is a car that won't start in the winter. What are the things you would do. | | 11. | It's a problem of logic; for example, a is to b as c is to d (A:B :: C:D). | | 12. | It looks like a problem, but really everything is fine if you only take the right point of view. | | | 13. | Assume the problem has no solution. What is the sensible course of action or strategy that follows from this conclusion? | | | 14. | It's a problem in numbers. Try performing the following operations on it: addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, percentages, moving a decimal place. | | | 15. | It's just something wrong with digestion: someone ate the wrong thing or has diarrhea, constipation, vomiting. | | | 16. | It's a problem of people: incompatible temperaments; struggling for dominance; loving each other but unable to admit it; feeling seared but not admitting it. | | | 17. | Outdated design. | | | 18. | It's problem of too little money; or rather too much money. | | | 19. | It's sabotage. | | | 20. | It's a matter of physical sickness. Need for (a) special drug; (b) long recuperation with not much medicine; (c) helping the patient deal with the impossibility of cure. | | | 21. | It's mental illness. Needs: (a) shock treatment; (b) talking therapy; (c) group therapy; (d) conditioning therapy; (e) help and support in going through craziness and coming out on the other side; (f) recognition that society is crazy and patient is sane. | | | | | |
j. Questions to help you write about an abstract concept (such as freedom, democracy, altruism, sexuality, justice; topics like these benefit particularly from the experiential techniques of the loop writing process, such as prejudices, stories, dialogues, moments, and portraits). | 1. | What color is ----- ? | | 2. | What shape? | | 3. | Imagine that shape moving around: what is its mode of locomotion? | | 4. | Give the worst, most biased, distorted definitions of you can give. | | 5. | Imagine this word or phrase did not exist. (Imagine a people with no word for it in their language.) | | 6. | What would be different because the word did not exist? | | 7. | Imagine ----- is a place. Describe it. |
|