Sara Dailey #004: Hard and soft similes

          I was always taught that similes are gentler than metaphors. You know–use simile in a Valentine’s Day card to your girlfriend; use metaphor for your angstiest emo poetry. Clearly, Sara Dailey didn’t get that lesson. First, look at the hard-hitting simile she works into her story, “The Memory Train”:

Like the soul, a migraine is visible only through its signs–the way your vision shrinks to a pinprick and pain blooms like razor wires being strung throughout your skull, looped spools of vines winding their way through the cortical folds.

Try this:

          Use strong, figurative language to describe some other kind of pain–a heart attack, a broken bone, a broken heart.

          Now it’s not like Dailey doesn’t know how to show a soft touch with simile as well:

Like the ocean, memory is fluid. As it happens, the first memory I have is of water.

Try this:

          Write about this water memory. Was it a time you nearly drowned? Your first attempt at water skiing? A water gun fight that went horribly wrong? Your first swim lesson?

Coming tomorrow: Dailey and rhetorical questions–oh, the possibilities!