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Find fresh metaphors for your passage
Paste the flat sentence or name the feeling, and get ten comparisons drawn from your speaker's world, each with a note on what it shows.
River writes ten comparisons for the feeling, object or moment you are trying to describe. Give it a word and some context, or paste the sentence that has gone flat, and it draws each comparison from the world of your piece: the speaker's work, the place, the period. Every option is labelled metaphor or simile and comes with a short note on what it brings out, so you can see why it might work before you try it.
Many metaphor lists could sit in anyone's story, and plenty of their lines are familiar clichés dressed up with new adjectives. A comparison earns its place when it fits the person speaking. A carpenter's grief might be measured in joints and load-bearing walls; a nurse's in shift changes. River also places two of the options inside your own sentence, so you can judge them in context rather than in isolation, next to the words that will surround them.
This is for poets, novelists and memoir writers who are revising a passage that tells the reader a feeling instead of letting them feel it. Treat the results as options, not answers. You might use one exactly as written, cut it down to a single word, or let it point you toward a comparison of your own. Sometimes the best outcome of reading ten options is deciding that your plain sentence was right all along.
What makes a comparison work
A metaphor or simile joins two unlike things so the reader sees one through the other. The comparison works when the borrowed image is concrete and the link between the two is surprising but exact. "Grief is heavy" names a feeling. "Grief is a wet wool coat you can't take off" lets the reader feel the weight, the cold and the trap at once, without being told any of them. That physical, specific quality is what most fresh comparisons share.
Clichés fail because readers have met them so often that no picture forms: time flies, a heart of stone, a rollercoaster of emotions. Freshness alone is not enough, though. A comparison that is too clever pulls attention to the writer and away from the moment. In fiction, the safest test is voice. Ask whether this character would ever think of this image. If not, the comparison belongs to the author, not the scene, and readers tend to notice the join.
Watch what surrounds the comparison as well. Two images in one sentence often collide into a mixed metaphor, such as a storm that takes root. One strong comparison usually does more than three decorative ones, and prose can carry fewer than poetry before it feels overwritten. Similes keep a little distance with like or as; metaphors make the claim outright. Choose by how firmly you want the reader to accept the link, then read the line aloud to hear whether it fits.
How it works
Describe the moment
Name the feeling or thing, who is speaking, and paste the sentence that feels flat.
Pick the form
Say whether it is for a poem, fiction or memoir, or let River work it out.
Read the options
Ten comparisons arrive in a document, each with a short note on what it shows.
Make it yours
Try one in your line, cut it down, or use it to find your own image.
What you get
- Ten comparisons for your subject, each clearly labelled as a metaphor or a simile
- Images drawn from your speaker's job, place and period rather than stock phrases
- A one-line note on what each comparison brings out about your subject
- Two options shown inside your own sentence so you can judge them in context
- A range from plain and everyday to more lyrical, matched to your form
- A suggestion of which one to try first, with the reason in a sentence
Common questions
What is the difference between a metaphor and a simile?
A simile makes the comparison openly with like or as, as in "grief sat on him like a wet coat". A metaphor states it as fact, as in "grief was a wet coat he couldn't take off". Similes keep a little distance and can feel more tentative; metaphors commit. River labels each option so you can switch one form to the other if the line needs it.
Why are the comparisons drawn from my character's world?
Because a comparison is also characterisation. The images a speaker reaches for show what they know and notice, so a sailor and an accountant should not describe fear the same way. If you say who is speaking, or paste a passage, River borrows from that person's work, place and period. If you don't, it assumes a neutral narrator and says so.
Can I use the comparisons exactly as written?
Yes, they are yours to use. Most writers get more from adapting them: swapping in a detail from the story, cutting a simile down to one verb, or combining two. Read the option inside your sentence and aloud. If it draws attention to itself instead of the moment, it is probably too much for that line.
How do I know if a comparison is a cliché?
If you can finish it before you reach the end, it is probably a cliché: time flies, cold as ice, a heart of gold. Another test is portability. If the comparison would work equally well in any story, it is not yet tied to yours. River steers away from familiar pairings, but check every option against your own reading.
Should every important moment get a metaphor?
No. Figurative language slows the reader, which is useful at a turning point and tiring everywhere else. Plain statement often lands harder in moments of shock or grief. Use a comparison when direct words fail to carry the feeling, and trust the plain sentence when they don't. River will say so if your original line already works.
Does it work for poems as well as prose?
Yes. Choose A poem and the options can be denser and more compressed, and River may suggest one that could carry across several lines as an extended image. For fiction and memoir, the options stay closer to how the narrator would actually think, since an image that sounds like the author performing breaks the voice.
Find fresh metaphors for your passage
Describe what you need, add any files you have, and your workspace opens with the work already underway.