: Re: Are my metaphors/similes effective? I'm editing a short story I wrote I while ago. And the first thing I wanted to do was to add similes/metaphors to it (OK, maybe just similes). The story

@Dunderdale623

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In my opinion such metaphorical similes work poorly in narration. It's a different matter if the similarities incite such similes in minds of the characters, but throwing these directly at the reader seems awkward to me.

Sure if Ruth thought or mentioned "In this green light her face looks like that of a traveler from a faraway civilization", or if Erin would smirk internally "Even this light makes me look like a little green man of Mars", that would follow the flow. The speech of the narrator is the thoughts of the reader. Trying to create this image directly in my (reader's) mind feels awkward to me - my natural inclination would be to compare her to a dryad, or some reptilian race, so the sourceless suggestion it's like an alien from outer space seems... alien to me.

The second one is better, the mechanical execution of routine job tasks is a well established trope, and I can easily summon that imagery. It's a common, generic metaphor and it works in this role just fine.

The third one doesn't work for me at all. I can't imagine gravity changing in a way I'd be unable to classify, a change in intensity, direction, shape, possibly shifting field, possibly shifting randomly. Think "You feel a shift in the temperature of your skin but you're unable to tell if it's warmer or cooler". A simile would be okay here, but I simply fail to imagine this one.

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