My SIMILE post is like a red red rose, or not . . .

Yesterday I gave examples of Dangling Participles. There are many ways to craft stronger manuscripts, but what I hope you take away from the post below is how to think about the scene you are writing in a tangible way: SEE the scene—and learn to “see the scene” without having to stop and to picture it every time, but instead by practicing your craft, paying attention to your work in edits (not in the initial writing of your draft!) so that strong writing happens much more naturally or instinctively.

We want our sentences to read better so they are not awkward (as those sentences in the post below are awkward, or maybe my blog post I'm writing quickly is awkward -laugh-)- Do we want perfection? YES! Okay, sort of kidding, but perfection is stress-inducing and impossible to achieve. Relax and have fun with your first draft(s), then be mean and beady-eyed with your edits. We can create works that read lyrically, or beautifully, or "flow" smoothly, by paying attention to detail while in the editing stage of our manuscripts. We can weed out many of those Sneaky things we tend to do repeatedly.

Knowing the names of grammar/syntax isn’t as important to me as knowing how to create a manuscript that is stronger and tighter, and lyrical. More important to consider when deadlines loom. I had much more time to write what became Tender Graces than I will have to write Secret Graces (the working title of VK2), so the more I know instinctively—the more I am aware of the editing side of my writing—the better off I'll be when I'm rushing to meet my deadline: when I have a mere few months(!) to write a novel versus all the time I want.

Paying attention, reading, editing, practicing my craft, show me what kinds of things I tend to over-do or should not do or just flat don't want to do even if it is considered acceptable--we all must find our writing style and voice and blah didity do dah day.

Today is: Simile.

One word I do a search for in my manuscript is “Like,” since like or as is used most often in Simile. I want to make sure I do not have a bunch of like this and like that, Similes, all over creation. Some samples of Similes are:

Her lips are red like a new rose

His leg was like a tree stump

My eyes bugged out like a frog

I hollered at her like a banshee.

The road was as curving as a snake’s journey

The cloud was puffy as a cotton ball

(Please don’t use those sentences above in your writing – they are awful and full of cliché *eyewww*- I am just throwing out quick examples. . . )

I have been guilty of using too much simile and so I eagle eye my manuscript to see if there is another method to get my point across. Look for those “like/as” phases in your work. Do you have a crud-load of simile? Is there another way to structure what you want to say? Similes can be beautiful and fun and effective, but too many of them and they begin to blare out as if you’d taken a highlighter pen and marked up your manuscript.

Note also, as I showed you in the examples above, the danger of simile is that they can easily slip into the dreaded cliche....be careful of that! Note that Simile and Metaphor, while lumped together, are not exactly the same thing, but I won’t go into all that…as I say: a Google or Bing or whatever search you do will give you the information you need.

I don’t think there is much more to say about similes right now.

UPDATE on MAGGIE LOU: she has completed one round of medicine and is almost finished the other. Her personality is really coming through and she’s feeling so much better. I am glad we found Maggie and she found us.

If you haven’t been by Teresa’s place yet where I guest blogged with a few words on submitting to a zine, I hope you’ll stop by. Questions are encouraged and I’ll be around to answer them. Namaste!

google images from: walkinthewords.blogspot.com

http://www.uleth.ca/edu/currlab/handouts/simile.jpg