Just in case you need some writing inspiration. Every year, English teachers from across the USA can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are a few of last year’s winners:
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room temperature Canadian beef.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
I’m actually going to steal #7.
i love the last one!
Some of these are not metaphors, but similes.
A simile compares using like or as.
A metaphor typically compares using “is”. However, it can also compare other ways so long as it says something became something else. If is uses like, it is a simile. Was going to use some of these with my students, but they are not true metaphors.