Be Careful of Analogies

Some of the Worst/Best Analogies of High School Students

Posted on 15. Jun, 2010 by Frank Fiore in Education and Literacy, Frank Fiore, Front Page Posts

Analogies are the coin of the realm for writers. Without  the power they have to paint pictures and ideas in the minds of our readers, our novels would read like some boring corporate report.

But they must be used correctly. Unfortunately not all the time.

Here are some of the more humorous analogies that high school students have used when writing stories. If you’re a teacher, you might want to share these with your struggling authors, to show what they shouldn’t do:

• He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.
• Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
• She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
• The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
• Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
• The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.
• His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
• 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.
• Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
• Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
• The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
• He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
• Even in his last years, Grand pappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
• She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
• The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
• “Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.
• It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
• It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
• He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
• Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
• She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
• The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.
• She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can’t sing worth a damn.
• It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.
• Her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist.

In case you didn’t get it, here’s a cartoon that’ll beat you over the head with the analogy point:

Want one more?

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