How to Write a Personification
In order to use personification well, it helps to be aware of the feeling you want a scene to have; it doesn’t have to be what the character feels, but that’s a good possibility. So, to use personification,
- Think of the feeling you want to express or draw out.
- Now think of a situation that would fit that feeling
- Use personification by describing the objects and scene as if they were people showing that feeling.
Example 1
For example, imagine a child is afraid of a storm.
Situation and Mood:
A young girl is very afraid in the middle of a night-time storm.
Sentence with Personification:
Annabelle listened to the storm rage outside her window: winds grabbed the house and shook the walls, rain hammered on the roof like it was trying to break in, and the thunder grumbled and roared with anger.
Annabelle’s fear is very clear in the personification of the storm as an angry and violent person trying to break in the house.
Example 2
For a second example, imagine a student who just aced an exam.
Situation and Mood:
A boy has just aced an exam and is walking home feeling triumphant.
Sentence with Personification:
Today the wind, which usually annoyed him, seemed to ruffle his hair like an affectionate parent, the trees seemed to applaud him with their rustling leaves, and even the barking dog he passed every day seemed to be shouting friendly greetings at him.
Not only is this a colorful and creative way to describe the scene, it also tells us lots about the character that is walking through it.
When to use Personification
Personification can be used in almost all creative writing to describe scenes and indirectly express feelings. It is a common element of poetry and prose and even speeches and songs. Because it is figurative and usually emotional language, personification cannot be used much in formal essays, technical writing, nor literal situations. For instance, a person working on a broken vacuum cleaner would not say “She’s angry and doesn’t feel like sucking up any dirt today.” Rather, he would specify, “The suction tube seems to be malfunctioning.”
However, there may be occasions when it can be used in non-fiction writing or speaking to make an abstract idea more clear or entertaining. For example, the famous physicist Leonard Susskind often says things like “the electrons don’t want to be in the same state” to describe their “behavior”; he’s not worried that his audience is going to mistakenly think that electrons have feelings; it’s just an effective—and entertaining—way to describe a difficult concept.