Metaphor And Simile

I was trying to finish the editing on a long story the other day when I got to thinking about metaphors and similes. They are easy to do wrong, as I've learned from experience, most recently on that story, but done right they can carry the reader like a good Morgan horse.



Here are a few I found on my bedside shelf tonight:



The fog tore apart, light charged the sea like blue neon.

--E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News.



If heartaches were matches, her little house would have burned down a long time ago.

--Rick Bragg, The Valley of Broken Hearts, St. Petersburg Times, August 1, 1993.



In the darkness of his face his eyes set yellow, and they were prone to glow like wished coins in…