Simile

Sometimes the best way to make a concept clear in the reader's mind is to compare it with something else. This literary technique is known as a simile. 

Introduction

Using a simile allows a writer to help their audience understand something by suggesting it is similar to something else.

This technique is similar to a metaphor, although not quite the same as we shall see.

Using Similes

Let's consider a hypothetical example to help us understand how similes work.

Imagine we are writing a story that involves a giant monster destroying a city. In our minds, this creature is just over 800 metres tall, and it is having a fine time stomping on all the buildings underneath it. 

To help our reader understand just how tall this monster is, we could use literal language to write the following:

Not bad, but our audience may have trouble picturing just how high 800 meters is (plus the sentence isn't very interesting). 

Let's try a simile to see if we can make our writing more meaningful. 

It turns out that the highest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is 829 metres high. Therefore, we could write about our monster like this:

Better, but still not as interesting as it could be. Let's see if we can spice it up a little more and add another simile into the mix.

That's a bit more like it. Our sentence is now more evocative thanks to the use of two similes (consisting of both like and as to mix things up), plus we have used more specific vocabulary in the form of the verbs towered and stomping.

Compared to our first attempt, this sentence has a greater sense of drama, and it helps the reader to appreciate the scale of the giant monster as it goes about its rampage. 

Understanding Similes

Similes are a helpful way to recreate whatever is in the mind of the writer in the mind of the reader. Because the reader cannot "see" whatever the writer is thinking, meaningful comparisons help to bridge this gap. 

NEXT:
Metaphor