While researchers have made progress in understanding metaphor comprehension, less is known about the production of metaphoric language. College students (N=129) were asked to use metaphoric comparisons to describe 16 topics. They were told to imagine themselves on a trip, writing home to someone they knew well, either a peer or a child (students who complied with the instructions numbered 114). The medium of topic presentation (pictorial, verbal or both) was varied across groups to test hypotheses regarding the role of perceptual information in metaphor production. After writing the comparisons, students were asked to rate each on difficulty and satisfaction. The results indicated that subjects provided with pictorial information rated the items as less difficult than those provided only with a verbal vignette. For subjects in the vignette condition, human and animal topics proved less difficult than plant and animal topics. The ordering was reversed for subjects provided with pictorial information. Satisfaction ratings were influenced by the communicative target; students instructed to write to peers were more satisfied than those instructed to address children. Further, students were more satisfied with comparisons written about objects and plants than with those written about humans and animals. These results provide some support for the view that perceptual information is important in figurative language production. (Author/ABL)