What makes a good simile as crisp as a hot, fresh waffle?
Or a bad simile as rancid as a broken public toilet?
Let’s discuss, then come up with some ridiculous similes of our own together!
During the last stream, a subscribers requested that we write some similes together.
Watch a short version of the stream here or scroll down for what we wrote.
Writing Good vs. Bad Similes
- A simile is a comparison that uses “like” or “as.”
- “The broccoli tasted like grass cuttings and adult responsibility.”
- “The abandoned mall was as decrepit as the ruins of an ancient temple.”
What makes a good simile?
#1. It SHOWs not TELLs
- X “The peas tasted gross” vs.
- O “The peas burst like tiny pimples in my mouth as I chewed.”
#2. It EMPHASIZEs
- X “I was lonely without her” vs.
- O “Being without her was like being stuck underwater, beneath a canopy of ice that no hope could penetrate.”
#3. It makes a description more CLEAR
- X “It was a disgusting crime scene” vs.
- O “The mess left from the dismembered bodies was horrific yet beautiful, like a Jackson Pollock drip painting.”
What makes a bad simile?
#1. Redundancy
- “The young fighter had a hungry look, like the kind you get from not eating for a while.”
- (The simile should expand upon the description, not repeat it.)
#2. Poor comparison
- “The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a jpeg file adjusted to 60 percent yellow.”
- “The little girl was as happy as a pufferfish tearing apart a centipede.”
- (The comparison should be easily understandable and fit with the tone of the story.)
#3. Cliches
- “Dead as a doornail.”
- “Good as gold.”
- “Feel like a million bucks.”
- (Try to use a simile that you’ve never heard before.)
Chat then came up with a bunch of different things we could describe with similes, and voted on their top five favorites. Here’s some highlights of what we came up with for each:
#1. The feeling of realizing you messed up, badly, one second after the fact
- It feels like gambling on a fart and losing.
- Stephanie’s awkward cringe at my heartfelt confession yeeted my feelings into the recycling bin like last year’s spicy memes. I wish I could scroll back in real time like I could on my tiktok dashboard
- Suddenly I felt like my mother on the day after my conception.
- After the cashier girl replied to my question of “Oh, when’s the baby due?” with “Uh, whenever I poop, it’s a food baby,” I felt as if the fluorescent lights above were melting me like Icarus’s wings.
- The answer to the final exam question came to me the moment after I turned it in, like the rent payment I’d desperately submitted a month after getting my eviction notice.
#2. Experiencing freefall
- The ground looked up at me, staring at this person where he did not belong, as if smiling and opening its mouth to devour me when I eventually slammed into it.
- I fell into unthinkable concepts, feeling as hollow as a faceless memory grasping at lucid dreams. I awoke, like a diver breaching the surface of an unexplored sea.
- Falling through the sky felt like breathing, so natural and effortless. With a parachute on my back, I was flying. I was finally reaching that “first star to the right, then straight on til morning”…my own personal Neverland.
- Falling through the sky was like a cleansing wind, blowing away every single worry and stress I had… except that I was falling through the sky.
- The first hill of the roller coaster felt as calm and comforting as a horror movie, alone, at midnight.
#3. 2020
- 2020 was as great and terrifying as Lord Voldemort’s professional resume
- I was able to plan for 2020 like I plan for trainwrecks on my morning commute.
- 2020 was like getting a bad sunburn that escalated within seconds to terminal skin cancer
- 2020 was like finding out 10 years after marrying that your wife is just really kinda ugly
- 2020 was like getting a repulsive acne outbreak, they kind that doesn’t fade with time because of the agonizing scars left from the puss infested monsters.
#4. The feeling of watching your stonks go up and down.
- Watching your stonks going up and down is like watching the morning news cycle through the alphabetical list of local school closed for the snow-day, only your school hasn’t been posted yet.
- When my one share of Apple went up by a penny, I felt like a fat cat smoking rolled-up hundred dollar bills.
- I invested in AMZN, TSLA, and ETH as eagerly as a redditor reposting a good meme.
- My stonks climbed like a sloth getting pulled down by a tiger.
#5. That feeling of almost falling back in your chair but catching yourself in time.
- Nearly falling in love with Phoebe was like almost falling back in your chair but catching yourself in time.
- Like slipping on ice, the tingle of adrenaline demanded my attention.
- I looked around to make sure nobody had seen, like an assassin having just claimed their prey.
- It felt like that one time I followed the instructions to the wrong recipe, but it came out perfectly.
- It was like that time I travelled to the Grand Canyon alone after college, after my girlfriend broke up with me. Looking out at the cliff-faces that the sunrise turned to gold-red strata, too beautiful to be real and almost flat against the horizon, my feet shuffled closer and closer to the edge before a condor’s swoop reminded me of all that cold empty air beneath me.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pexels