What is a conceit?
I read that word ‘conceit’ while researching other worldbuilding books about worldbuilding for my upcoming new Worldbuilding Wizardry Workbook titled The Cosmic Kitchen: A Worldbuilding Wizardry Workbook for Speculative Fiction Romance Authors (still in work).
No matter how young or old we are nor how long we’ve been writing, we always learn something, and for me, it’s almost daily because, you know, I’m not a genius. I’m just a writer who writes and learns as she goes.
So, when I read that word ‘conceit’ I wondered, there’s conceit in writing? I’m not conceited, I thought. What is this conceit concept in writing?
Off I went looking up the conceit in literature.
Google AI says: “In literature, a conceit is an elaborate and often surprising extended metaphor that draws a striking comparison between two seemingly unrelated things. Unlike a standard metaphor, a conceit is intellectually complex, imaginative, and typically governs a large section of a poem or an entire work.”
An extended metaphor?
Ack. Boring definition. I needed more.
OK. Let’s begin at the beginning. What’s a metaphor? (I know, I use them all the time, but me with my simple mind needed to take a step back and get there from here.)
Per Wikipedia, “A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to create a likeness or an analogy.”
And an analogy is “…a comparison or correspondence between two things (or two groups of things) because of a third element that they are considered to share.” Via Wikipedia.
Not to slide into a rabbit hole, but I had to look up Wiki’s given reference—
“Analogy plays a significant role in human thought processes. It has been argued that analogy lies at ‘the core of cognition’” by Douglas Hofstadter’s Analogy as the Core of Cognition, given at the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University Bloomington, on April 12, 2005.
And just who is this Douglas Hofstadter guy? “Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American cognitive and computer scientist whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, strange loops, ambigrams, artificial intelligence, and discovery in mathematics and physics.” Wikipedia
So now that I had the basic of basics, I began again. How does conceit work in story?
We know metaphors. A metaphor is a comparison between two things. Like “She has a heart of gold.” The she character doesn’t literally have gold making up her heart. That might make for a cool Speculative Fiction character. (I can see a story I’ll be writing now: “The Girl with the Gold Heart.”)
Metaphors are used as symbols and references based on references and layered meanings. They can be simple, like “He’s sleeping like a log.” Or more complex.
All metaphors, like Hofstadter said, rely on our accumulated knowledge and past references, in culture, in literature, in everything from our lives we’ve been exposed to. Our human brains connect via metaphor, said Hofstadter, and I’m believing him now. At first I thought, now way, we are based on facts and feelings. Yet, when I come to think on it, my whole life is a metaphor of metaphors.
“She has a heart of gold” assumes we know that gold is associated with good. In some way, over our years of living, ‘gold’ and ‘good’ have become synonymous, like in “good as gold.” If we didn’t know the connection between the words ‘good’ and ‘gold’, the sentence would be nonsense and probably taken quite literally.
On another planet, in another culture, gold might not be the equivalent of good. It might be the opposite, or it might just be an ore in the ground and worth nothing to them. When we are writing our characters and their cultures, societies, and norms, we have to take that into account. What is normal for them? How did that term or word develop in their culture?
The phrase ‘striking gold’ might mean they hit the poorhouse, or anything else we could make up in our worlds. Kids wouldn’t get ‘gold stars’ in school for getting good grades. A company couldn’t ‘strike gold’ and we couldn’t drill for oil and use the term ‘black gold’ nor call someone a ‘goldbrick’ for being lazy and shirking work.
Words have a past, a history.
And we as writers should know them. Then, when we write our Speculative Fiction stories, we have to know how words work in our characters’ universes. Was ‘gold the root of all evil?’ Perhaps a ‘gold digger’ was someone who worked without wanting riches. Perhaps gold on a particular world was an evil, vile thing. If it is on that world, then gold cannot be applied to a heart (unless bad), or feelings in any good way. Your character then can’t be “good as gold” or have a “heart of gold” (unless it’s a bad thing, like a ‘lead foot’).
On their world, can the sun be as yellow and bright as gold? If gold is useless on that planet, then the phrase “he who has the gold makes the rules” can’t be applicable. Everything we change on our pretend world must then have a different meaning and a different history and it’s up to us to create all that and make it seem real.
As Spec Fic writers, we have to consider how many words or terms we take for granted here on Earth present day will we be able to use in our not contemporary fiction?
Many stories can assume a lot. Like using our normal colors as normal colors on our worlds—red is red, black is black. And can we assume usually that there is a night and day (if our world has that)—night is black, day is light. Though many stories swap things around. I mean we have that on Earth already, right? Think Alaska and the Northern and Southern poles. Where would those be located on our made-up planet? What would our Earth look like if the equator were to suddenly become the poles and the sun suddenly hit the poles like it does the equator now?
I find that writers often only change a few things in their Spec Fic stories to get the feeling of being alien, different, unique. In one story, I have the term ‘an’ for ‘hour’ and ‘ya’an’ for miles or kilometers, i.e. distance. On their world, time and distance are connected and they cannot conceive of one without the other (in a much stronger sense than we do now.)
Back to conceit and extended metaphors.
Extended metaphors, sustained metaphors or ‘conceits’ are the same as metaphors, but bigger. Conceits a longer and has more than one single point between the object described and the comparison used to describe it.
An extended analogy or conceit is usually developed over several lines of text. It can be built in a paragraph, a scene, or even over an entire novel. I shudder to think I’d have to make such a complicated conceit, but the reward would be explosive!
Here are some examples that might make sustained metaphors or conceits more understandable.
From Kindlepreneur.com:
• Metaphor example: “That man is a snake.”
• Simile example: “Your ex is sneaky as a snake.”
• Extended metaphor example: “You’re a snake! Everything you hiss out of your mouth is a lie. You frighten children, and you have no spine.”
Why should we use an extended metaphor or conceit?
The main purpose of a conceit is to break down complex ideas into more comprehensible and compelling terms. Metaphors, similes, and conceits make our stories worth reading. They connect what we know (all our life knowledge, feelings, culture, etc.) to the world and characters we are creating in our stories.
According to Kindlepreneur, an extended metaphor consists of four main elements:
1. Vehicle: This is the word(s) through which the meaning of the metaphor is conveyed. If you say, “She’s such an Eeyore!” then Eeyore is the vehicle through which a specific emotion is conveyed.
2. Tenor: This is what is being conveyed through the metaphor. If you say, “She’s such an Eeyore!” then the tenor is sadness, which is what the vehicle of Eeyore conveys.
3. Ground: This is the similarity between the 2 compared words. Think: common ground. If you say, “She’s such an Eeyore!” then the ground between “she” and “Eeyore” is that they’re both sad.
4. Tension: This is what is different between the 2 compared words. If you say, “She’s such an Eeyore!” then the tension between “she” and “Eeyore” is that “she” is a real human and “Eeyore” is a fictional (stuffed) animal.
Extended metaphors can also involve multiple interrelated metaphors within an overarching one, creating a complex and nuanced comparison that can add layers of meaning to a text.
Conceit examples
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet:
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief…”
Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union:
“It never takes longer than a few minutes, when they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That’s what a family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship, and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills that you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire that you light to keep away the beasts.”
And one of my favorites, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451:
“‘Sit down, Montag. Watch. Delicately, like the petals of a flower. Light the first page, light the second page. Each becomes a black butterfly. Beautiful, eh? Light the third page from the second and so on, chainsmoking, chapter by chapter, all the silly things the words mean, all the false promises, all the second-hand notions and time-worn philosophies.’”
Don’t get me wrong, good metaphors and conceits are not easy. I mean seriously not easy. Avoiding cliched or contrived metaphors is difficult, but it’s what we writers must strive to do.
Why do writers use conceits?
According to litcharts.com:
• To explain or describe an abstract concept in vivid, memorable, and unique terms.
• To help the reader make a new, insightful connection between two different entities that might not have seemed related.
• To help communicate personal or imaginary experiences in terms to which readers can relate.
• To show off a bit. Conceits—particularly metaphysical conceits—gave poets a chance to show off their smarts by comparing two very unlike things.
• To lead the reader to surprising and important discoveries by connecting different spheres of experience and language. The figurative meaning that metaphors create can help a reader to see the world or a concept in a new way.
The best way I know of it create metaphors and conceits is to use sensory writing, language and imagery to create vivid and memorable descriptions. To connect my ideas in my story with feelings, memories, twisting what we take for granted in today’s reality to apply to my fictional story. I especially enjoy conceits that tie in with my theme and storyline throughout the story.
Ensure your conceits are necessary. Don’t just make something up cause it’s cool. It’s not. Like everything else in our story, even beautiful and witty metaphors must be absolutely necessary to the story and to understanding the story. Otherwise, they are just more words on the page accomplishing nothing.
So now I know what a conceit is. The next question, can I create them in my stories?
I shall endeavor to do my best!
