Comparisons That Should Work but Don't
We all know that comparisons spice up speech and writing. There are similes, which use "like" or "as." Tennessee Ernie Ford had a million of them. One of my favorites is "She's as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs." And there are metaphors, like "Love is a battlefield." Well done, comparisons imprint on the reader's mind. Really good ones make me pause to appreciate the creativity involved. But there are also badly-done comparisons. Some are just tired: He was as dead as a door nail. Others are new but not necessarily effective: She looked like my cousin Maxine when she's hung over. I have a program that shows me where I've used trite sayings in a manuscript. Sometimes I keep them, like if a character is the type of person who talks that way. Other times I take them out, wondering how they slipped in in the first place. Here are some deliberately bad comparisons, just for giggles. The lit