Word Painting – Sometimes it’s the Little Words

I love a good metaphor, don’t you?

Have a look at this sentence I read recently in the upcoming release The Silver Suitcase by Terrie Todd:

She lay awake far too long, trying in vain to push waves of grief back into the vast ocean called Sorrow.

There is such a sense of hopelessness embodied in this imagery (especially when it ends the chapter, like it does in this book).  You don’t have to have been to a beach to know the impossibility of trying to stop waves from coming to shore; the relentless incursion.

But do you notice that there are two specific word choices in this sentence that give this metaphor some extra gravitas?  She doesn’t write ‘an ocean of sorrow’, but ‘the ocean called Sorrow’.  Small words, big impact.

The Silver Suitcase is published by Waterfall Press and will release on 26 January 2016.  You can read my review of this novel here.