Monday, March 19th
Happy Monday!
Today we will have fun with similes. We will look at some dreadful similes, some delightful similes, and then we will write our OWN!
Horrible Similes Mingle
Rewrite the bad ones
But before I share with you 20 top similes from great literature, I offer a few tips, like lanterns that serve to light your way:Strive to create engaging similes and metaphors, but insert them in the service of your prose, as stars in the sky, not entire moons. They are foot soldiers, not field officers, in your campaign to inform and/or interest your readers. They are chorus members, not ingenues; extras, not stars. They are — OK, enough with the metaphors, already.
Similes, metaphors, and analogies are turns of phrase that help readers conjure images in a narrative, whether in fiction or nonfiction, but it is in the latter form that they bloom more profusely. And what’s the difference between each of the three literary devices?
A simile is a comparison between one thing and another. If you refer to a figure of speech blooming like a flower on a page, you have created a simile. If you more directly say that the figure of speech bloomed before your eyes, you have employed a metaphor. An analogy is a more practical, didactic description: “Imagine that the figure of speech is like a flower blooming on the page.” Analogy is more common in nonfiction, but simile and metaphor are found there as well.
But before I share with you 20 top similes from great literature, I offer a few tips, like lanterns that serve to light your way:Strive to create engaging similes and metaphors, but insert them in the service of your prose, as stars in the sky, not entire moons. They are foot soldiers, not field officers, in your campaign to inform and/or interest your readers. They are chorus members, not ingenues; extras, not stars. They are — OK, enough with the metaphors, already.
- They should be simple and clear: The ones you will read below are literally outstanding, but they’re also removed from their context, where they are mere flowers in fertile fields of great writing. Similes and metaphors should be useful, concise, and then perhaps memorable as well, in that order. And if the task of creating one becomes toil, you’re trying too hard, and your exertions will show.
- They should stir, but they shouldn’t be mixed: When you adopt a specific theme, stick with it. A mixed metaphor is a missed opportunity, and a distraction rather than a delight.
- They should be original: If a simile or metaphor doesn’t rise head and shoulders above a more functional description, it won’t fly. Make sure the imagery is worth the effort of creating it.
- They should entertain: A simile or metaphor, to return to a previously employed metaphor, is like an actor with a bit part who utters a single line, but that line should be trenchant or ticklesome.
- They should be visually arresting: Similes and metaphors are intended to paint a picture for the reader in order to endow a person, place, or thing with resonance.
Herewith, lessons in incandescent imagery:
1. “. . . she tried to get rid of the kitten which had scrambled up her back and stuck like a burr just out of reach.” — Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
2. “Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I’m nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.” — The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
4. “. . . and snow lay here and there in patches in the hollow of the banks, like a lady’s gloves forgotten.” — Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor, by R. D. Blackmore
5. “I would have given anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel wires of a cage.” — Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad
6. “In the eastern sky there was a yellow patch like a rug laid for the feet of the coming sun . . .” — The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
7. “. . . when I laid down the paper, I was aware of a flash — rush — flow — I do not know what to call it — no word I can find is satisfactorily descriptive — in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river. — To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt, by Charles Dickens
9. “She entered with ungainly struggle like some huge awkward chicken, torn, squawking, out of its coop.” — The Adventure of the Three Gables, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
13. “The very mystery of him excited her curiosity like a door that had neither lock nor key.” — Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
14. “Elderly American ladies leaning on their canes listed toward me like towers of Pisa.” — Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
15. “Camperdown, Copenhagen, Trafalgar — these names thunder in memory like the booming of great guns.” — Mutiny on the Bounty, by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
16. “It was Françoise, motionless and erect, framed in the small doorway of the corridor like the statue of a saint in its niche.” — Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust
17. “The water made a sound like kittens lapping.” — The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
20. “. . . impressions poured in upon her of those two men, and to follow her thought was like following a voice which speaks too quickly to be taken down by one’s pencil . . .” — To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf
Create our own
friendship
love
hate
jealousy
family
anger
boredom
books
middle school
writing
fear
the teacher
my _________(pick relative)
sport (pick one you like or hate)
subject in school (pick one you love or dislike)
possession (pick a possession you treasure)
my room
the beach
______________(insert favorite or least favorite place)
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