Is using an 'empty' metaphor considered bad style?

Question

I just had this sentence off my head:> A crown of fire spread through the country consuming everything on its> way.What I mean by empty metaphor is a metaphor that doesn't really have any meaning or even purpose. The same sentence could be replaced with the following:> A circle of fire spread through the country consuming everything on> its way.Also, I don't even think crown would make sense even if the "fire" was spread by an evil king. What do you think?

Answer 1

When we talk about metaphors, we talk about source domains and target domains. So to have an enjoyable metaphor, there has to be some feature (or system) shared between the source and target domains. So far as I can tell, 'crown' and 'circle' are the two domains you're working with, and they need to share some similarity by way of 'fire' or 'fire spreading.' I'm not really sure that circles of fire spread, so I'm not really sure that a 'crown' works geometrically. You might be homing in on the kind of golden, glowing aspects of a crown, in which case there are other objects available to you; but there's also the regal aspect of the crown, which I'm not sure is appropriate for a fire destroying a lot of stuff.