This article is reprinted from The Consulting Journal
http://www.consultingjournal.com
Writing: Similes
by David Blakey
What similes are and how to use them in business writing.
[Monday 26 December 2005]
A simile is different from a metaphor.
A metaphor is used as a replacement, as in expressions like scapegoat
and can of worms
. So a metaphor can be used as follows.
Consultants should avoid becoming the scapegoat for their client's failure to manage projects that were always cans of worms.
A simile is different in that it is used with the original text and is used to describe it.
Consultants should avoid being blamed and dismissed, like sacrificial lambs, for their client's failure to manage projects that were as unmanageable as a runaway train.
Note the words like
and as
when the similes are used.
Most of the worst examples of metaphors and similes occur in the writing of people who are not professional writers. Occasionally, a professional writer - even a respected writer - will use an unfortunate metaphor or simile. Sometimes, writers will use poor metaphors or similes deliberately. Novelists might have their characters use bad metaphors or similes.
Here are some examples.
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
This is bad because it is long-winded. A good simile or metaphor should bring an image to mind immediately. By the time you get to the end of this simile, you might have forgotten the point that it was intended to make.
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
This bad because it is probably easier to think of a person as being six foot three than a tree. A reader may need to imagine a person that tall so that they can imagine a tree that tall.
The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
This is a bad simile because there really is no similarity between a marriage collapsing and an ATM introducing surcharges.
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
I have to admit that this might be useful as a line in a play, but it is too ridiculous for its use here.
He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
This simile does not achieve the effect that the writer intends. The simile kills the romance with the mob informant.
Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
This simile is unintentionally brilliant, as it modifies a standard simile - of having a mind like a steel trap - and then modifying it to convey another meaning. You should avoid doing this, however.
The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
A simile should add something to sentence. This means more than simply extending its length.
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
This is one of those similes that looks as if the writer thought that a simile would be a good idea, and then could not think of one, and finally inserted one that referred to bells.
It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
The main point about a simile is that it should add meaning by using a situation that the reader will recall from experience. In this case this seems unlikely.
Before you use a simile, check the following.
It should be short. Shakespeare wrote that brevity is the soul of wit
. Good similes display wit, and therefore should be brief. Shakespeare knew what he was talking about. My general rule is that the length of a sentence should be less than doubled by adding a simile. So It was big
can be extended by as a bus
.
It should bring an immediate image to the mind of the reader. As soon as you read the word bus
, your mind should have a mental image of a bus. If I wrote It was as big as a Dennis Trident
, does an immediate image spring to your mind?
It should refer to a common experience or image. A good simile should be understood by almost everyone, everywhere. The majority of people have seen a bus of some kind. It is not important that someone in Britain may imagine a double-decker bus, that someone in Germany may imagine an articulated single-decker bus. The simile is not intended to convery precision. My example does not say It was the exact dimensions of a bus
.
Although a simile is not an exact description, it should be relevant. If I wanted to say that something was both large and immobile, I would use a simile such as a mountain rather than a bus. This is particularly true if I had wanted to state that something was big and then later add that it was also immobile. It would be too complex to write It was as big as a bus. It was also immobile, like a broken-down bus
. That would be stretching the simile a little too much. Make sure that the simile remains relevant.
Any simile should strengthen the writing. If the simile adds nothing to the sense and clarity of the sentence, then you should not use it. If, in context, it is enough to say It was big
, then that will do.
The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
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