A writer has an idea that plain statement would render flatly
A writer reaches a point where the literal sentence won't carry the weight of what's meant. "I was very sad" is accurate and inert. So the writer reaches for a device — metaphor, simile, imagery — chosen not at random but matched to the kind of meaning that needs transferring. A metaphor compresses two things into one ("grief is a tide"); a simile holds them apart for comparison ("grief comes like a tide"); imagery supplies sensory detail and lets the reader assemble the feeling without being told what to feel.
This is the actual function of a device: it carries the idea indirectly, and the reader infers meaning rather than receiving it as a statement. That inference is where the emotional response lives — a reader told "he was alone" nods; a reader shown a single chair at a long table supplies the aloneness themselves, and the supplied meaning lands harder because it was earned rather than issued. A device, then, is best understood as a means-to-effect, not a label to memorise off a list. Knowing that "grief is a tide" is "a metaphor" is far less useful than knowing why that metaphor was the right tool for that sentence.
A passage feels significant but its point is not stated
A passage feels weighted beyond its literal content, and the reader can't yet say why. Often the cause is a recurring object or an outside reference — a coat that keeps reappearing, a line that echoes another text — doing work the surface narration never names. The first move is identification: recognising that the coat is functioning as symbolism, or that the echoed line is allusion, an indirect reference to something outside the passage itself.
The second move is tracing: following what the symbol or reference points to beyond the page — a biblical story, a historical event, a cultural association the coat is borrowed from. Only once that external referent is named does the passage's theme become something a reader can state in a sentence rather than merely feel. This is the actual procedure behind close reading and essay writing: notice the recurrence, name the device, trace the referent, articulate the theme. Skipping straight to "this symbolizes loss" without doing the tracing is guessing dressed as analysis.
Prose reads flat or generic
Flat prose has two different possible causes, and they call for different fixes. The first is a sentence-level problem — a literary technique failure: dull word choice, no sound patterning, no figurative language, nothing happening in the clause itself. The second is a whole-work problem — a literary element failure: thin theme, inert character, a structure that doesn't build. Treating a structural problem with a sentence-level fix (sprinkling in metaphors) wastes effort; treating a sentence-level problem with structural revision (replotting a scene) does too.
A simple test separates them: can the issue be pointed to inside a single sentence, or does it only show up once several paragraphs or scenes are read together? If it's visible in one sentence, it's technique — diagnose the specific device category and apply it. If it only appears across the stretch, it's an element — theme, character, structure — and no amount of local metaphor repairs it. After applying the matching fix, the check is always the same: read the passage back and ask whether it now produces the intended effect in a reader, not whether it now contains more devices.
Metaphor
A metaphor states that one thing is another, with no comparison word softening the claim — "time is a thief," "the classroom was a zoo." The equation is direct, which is what gives metaphor its compression: two unrelated things are forced together, and the overlap the reader finds between them becomes the meaning. Shopify's guide to figurative language in copy notes that this directness is also what makes metaphor useful in persuasive writing — it asserts an identity rather than inviting a comparison the reader could reject.
Simile
A simile makes the same kind of comparison but keeps the two things visibly separate, joined by "like" or "as" — "brave as a lion," "moved like water." Because the comparison word is explicit, a simile reads as more tentative and more ornamental than a metaphor stating the same idea; it asks the reader to hold both terms in view rather than fuse them. Grammar Brain's breakdown of figurative types treats simile and metaphor as the two devices every other figurative tool is built from, since most remaining devices are variations on direct or qualified comparison.
Figurative language
Figurative language is the umbrella term for any language used non-literally to build comparison or imagery rather than to state fact plainly. Metaphor and simile sit at its centre because comparison is the mechanism nearly every other device relies on — personification compares an object to a person, hyperbole compares a thing to an exaggerated version of itself, and allusion compares a passage to something outside it. Yoodli's overview frames the umbrella this way: the category exists to separate language doing expressive, inferential work from language doing descriptive, literal work.
A short, defensible core set, rather than a sprawling catalogue, covers most of what a reader needs to recognise on sight:
| Device | Mechanism | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Metaphor | Direct equation of two things | "Time is a thief." |
| Simile | Comparison using like/as | "Brave as a lion." |
| Personification | Human traits given to non-human things | "The wind whispered." |
| Hyperbole | Deliberate, obvious exaggeration | "I've told you a million times." |
| Imagery | Sensory detail standing in for direct statement | "The empty chair at the table." |
| Allusion | Indirect reference to an outside work or event | "A Herculean effort." |
That's a workable "seven," counting figurative language itself as the umbrella the other six sit under — which is closer to what the fixed-count lists people search for actually need than a long undifferentiated roll call of device names.
Meaning
Meaning, in this context, is whatever significance a device adds on top of the literal content of the sentence. "The wind whispered" literally claims nothing true — wind has no voice — but the personification adds a meaning the literal sentence doesn't carry: quiet, secrecy, unease. First Draft Pro's explainer treats this gap between literal content and added significance as the whole reason figurative language exists: without it, a device is decoration rather than communication.
That gap is also where overuse shows itself. A device that adds no meaning beyond what plain statement already conveyed — a metaphor reaching for an effect the sentence didn't need — weakens the writing instead of sharpening it, because the reader notices the device working and stops noticing what it was meant to convey. The test for any device, metaphor or otherwise, is whether removing it loses meaning or only loses ornament. Hold a sentence up to that test before deciding the figurative language stays.