Thursday, May 24, 2007

Now That's A Simile

Yesterday I wrote about similes that didn't work for me. After giving up on the book I found them in, I started reading Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce. He uses similes that I can't help but understand.

"Dr. Ramanan's car, for instance, was that deep red you only get on a Toyota. It looked like a big lady's fingernail."

Yes!

"She's got two pigtails. That sounds nice and girly, but actually they make her look like a Viking."

Okay. I will admit that I have never seen a Viking in the flesh. But I have a cultural understanding of what a Viking is. Or was. Or at least an understanding of what one would look like. So I can take the unknown girl, Terrible Evans, and compare her to a Viking and get an idea of what she looks like.

Taken in the context of the paragraph, that second simile also tells us something about the character its describing that goes beyond her appearance.

I say that anytime you can make a bit of writing double its workload, go for it. Make those similes work like mules.

2 Comments:

Blogger Kelly said...

One of my most loved children's books. Underrated, imo.

12:07 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This game is very interesting and as long as you know the Scions Of Fate gold you will love it and you will go to play this game every day. Instead in this game you will not complain it and you will only want to earn the SOF gold to make yourself become strong. sometimes you can also go to earn the Scions Of Fate money with your friends, because if you play the game with your friends you can be strong more easily. I know every player wants to get more and more cheap SOF gold to become strong. So you can buy sof gold and then you can equipment yourself with the weapons.

2:31 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home