12.09.2008

Exhibit 14.19

On Editing a Novel #11

USING SIMILES IS LIKE USING GOLD. You may have noticed that the title of this segment on similes is like a simile except it's not because it actually is a simile so is therefore not like a simile at all.

Similes are like word friendship bracelets. When you put one on it's as if you're creating a team of superheroes and when that team of superheroes goes out to save your readers it's like punching the doldrums or like mule-ing a donkey and a horse or like eating Thai food as if you've never eaten Thai food like a starved person before.

Not just any writer should use similes, however. Here's a quick test to see if you're one of the writers who should:

A) Are you not a court reporter?
B) Are you Michael Chabon?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, it's like you were conceived to use similes!

But you may only use these similes in your novel:

...ducks as if nickels
...The Netherlands is like an impish Denmark
...fast as Lent
...Lent as a pauper's pockets past payday
..."The Other Side of Summer" is, like, totally my favorite track off Might Like a Rose
...cousins are like elbows, everyone's got two plus or minus
...Colorado is like a sunglasses case filled with dim hope
...alive as dead won't be
...who as a blindfolded birthday party
...dictionaries are like books of words
...love is like jazz and/or a bottle of gin
...positive as the other side of the battery
...March is like an impish October
...a voice like purple
...hungry as a Pope
...Magnetic Fields references are like impish, wounded deer
...wasteful as Thanksgiving night
...tuft as dapper snails
...eyes like a suitcase filled with white shirts and a circle of sort of hazely shirts on top
...as accidental as a Tuesday noon
...bees like empty soda cans
...dinosaurs as if kindergarten recess

And that's it. There are no more. Ever.

2 comments:

jimStock said...

This post is a New Yorker cartoon. Is that one?

A. Peterson said...

Not without the word impish it isn't.