22 Awful Analogies

I encourage writers to use analogies to illustrate a concept by taking another concept that their audience already understands and connecting it to the concept the writer is explaining. 

Not only can this result in the target audience understanding, but they also tend to bring along the emotions associated with the concept you used in the analogy.  

To quote some accomplished writers:

Our brains are great at comparing multiple things, tracking connections, and observing patterns. As a result, comparisons, metaphors, and analogies make for great persuasive writing tools. – Jacob McMillen

I love thinking about analogies – so much of the creative process involves finding lateral connections between things. – Nick Asbury

Use analogies to anchor the new in something the audience knows to get them to think about it in a new way. – Joel Klettke

Analogies Gone Awry

My friend, author Madison Barlow, sent me this list of  painfully terrible analogies. She said they made her both cringe and chuckle, so she couldn't resist sharing them.

Neither can I.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian bacon.

He had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a Rottweiler makes before it throws up.

Bertram fell 14 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.

Her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist. 

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

She was like a magnet: Attractive from the back, repulsive from the front. 

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

Gary and Maureen had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who also hadn't met.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon. 

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. 

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. 

 It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

He was as tall as a 6'4" tree.

The revelation that his marriage of 26 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge free ATM.

Th thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.

She had him like a toenail stuck in a shag carpet. 

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Frank. But unlike Frank, this plan just might work.

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

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.

Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze. 

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00pm instead of 7:30.

Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter 

The ballerina rose gracefully en point and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

“Oh, Josh, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night. 

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

The little boat drifted across the pond, exactly the way a cinder block wouldn't.

Thank you, Madison ... in return, here's a plug (it's the least I could do): Grab a free copy Madison Barlow's She's Mine and if you like this short story, check out her books (also available on Amazon).