A Guide to Similes vs. Metaphors

December 20, 2018 | 6 min read

A picture is worth a thousand words.

It’s an old saying that means you can convey a lot of information with a single image. As a writer, you generally don’t have the benefit of imagery to go along with your words, so instead, you need to find simple and effective ways to paint vivid mental pictures for your readers. Ideally, you want your writing to be richly descriptive without using long-winded explanations.

One way to do this is with the use of similes and metaphors. Both are ways of describing something by comparing it to something else, but there’s one subtle difference:

  • A simile is when you say something is like something else.
  • A metaphor is when you say something is something else.

The best way to understand each method is to examine some examples.

Similes

“All at once he sprang into jerky agitation, like one of those flat wooden figures that are worked by a string.” (from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad)

Remember those toys? Their limbs had joints at the shoulders, elbows, hips and knees. One pull on the string dangling down from their back would cause their arms and legs to fly in all directions. By applying this mental image to a human body, you can clearly picture the action that Joseph Conrad was describing.

“By this time Scarlett was boiling, ready to rear like a horse at the touch of a strange rough hand on its bridle.” (from Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell)

Margaret Mitchell could have said “Scarlett was very angry,” but by comparing her to an easily-startled horse, she has conveyed the explosive nature of the emotion simmering just under the surface, ready to burst out at the slightest provocation.

“The guinea pigs, awake and nibbling, were making a sound like that of a wet cloth rubbed on glass in window-cleaning.” (from Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis)

Anyone who has cleaned a window knows the distinctive noise that comes from the friction of a damp cloth on the glass. This quirky simile makes the sentence much more interesting than if Sinclair Lewis had merely said the guinea pigs were squeaking.

“I had no choice but to hobble like an off-balance giraffe on my one flat, one four-inch heel arrangement.” (from The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger)

The use of a giraffe in this simile is perfect because it’s so easy to picture its long, gangly legs, and the way that a baby giraffe struggles to control its limbs when it first gets up after being born.

As you can see from these examples, the object that the writer uses as a comparison is something that is easily identifiable to the reader, and that creates a distinct mental image, engaging the reader’s memory and imagination.

Metaphors

“Life is a highway.” (from the song by Tom Cochrane)
“Life is a rollercoaster.” (from the song by Ronan Keating)

Obviously, life is not actually a highway or a rollercoaster, but both these metaphors convey the fact that life is a long, twisting journey that has highs and lows. Both highways and rollercoasters conjure up images of adventure, excitement, fear, elation, beginnings and destinations. They’re both something that you travel on, and they present you with diverse experiences along the way. For comparison, the movie Forrest Gump contains the famous simile, “life is like a box of chocolates.”

“Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra, and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath.” (from Matt Groening, The Big Book of Hell)

While comparing love to a snowmobile crash might seem an unusual metaphor, it’s an effective one. It’s suggesting the rush and the exhilaration as you speed across the snow is much like the joyous out-of-control feeling when you fall head over heels for someone. Then, before you know it, the shock of commitment hits and suddenly you feel trapped.

“Mr. Neck storms into class, a bull chasing thirty-three red flags." (from Speak by Laurie Anderson)

While Mr. Neck isn’t really a bull, the imagery of him acting like one is highly evocative – wild eyes, flaring nostrils, huffing and puffing, each of his thirty-three students a red flag causing his rage.

“‘Life,’ wrote a friend of mine, ‘is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.’” (from A Room with a View by E.M. Forster)

If you’ve ever listened to a novice violinist, you’re probably familiar with the painful screeching noise that often accompanies their early attempts at music. The violin is notoriously hard to learn and can take many years to master, but the results can be glorious if you put enough work in, which makes it an excellent metaphor for life.

“What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!” (from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare)

No, Juliet is not a flaming ball of gas. The sun definitely is – but it’s much more than that. It’s the source of all life. It provides solar energy to feed plants which in turn feed other creatures and create oxygen. It governs the water cycle in our atmosphere. Without the sun, we’d cease to exist. And that’s how Romeo feels about Juliet. She is everything to him, and he cannot survive without her. William Shakespeare could have used a simile and said that Juliet was like the sun, suggesting she was radiant and beautiful, but that would have been much less powerful.

How to use similes and metaphors

Sophie opened the back door and stepped into the garden. It was hot and humid.

Now, let’s use a simile and a metaphor to describe the same event.

Simile: Sophie opened the back door and stepped into the garden. It was like walking into a sauna.

Metaphor: Sophie opened the back door and stepped outside. The garden was a sauna.

Either method works well and is more interesting than just stating it was hot and humid. The simile and metaphor both encourage the reader to recall the feeling of entering a sauna – the oppressive, close, muggy heat that makes sweat trickle down your back without evaporating.

When you’re using similes and metaphors, there are a few things you need to avoid:

1. Awkward Comparisons

If you say, “the smell hit me like falling rock”, it sounds awkward because a smell is not a physical object, and because smells don’t drop from the sky.

2. Overused Cliches

A lot of similes and metaphors are clichés, and these should be used very sparingly. A few examples:

  • Dead as a dodo
  • Stubborn as a bull
  • Quiet as a mouse
  • Raining cats and dogs
  • The calm before the storm

3. Mixed metaphors

A mixed metaphor is where you combine two or more incompatible metaphors, often with ridiculous results.

“Sir, I smell a rat; I see him forming in the air and darkening the sky, but I'll nip him in the bud.” (attributed to Sir Boyle Roche)

“Yes, you just like to play the cool Will Truman while I'm all the intense crazy one. Well, once the bowling shoe is on the other foot, look who's the good cop and look who's the bad cop.” (Grace Adler from Will & Grace)

“'I don't like it. When you open that Pandora's box, you will find it full of Trojan horses.” (Ernest Bevin, Labour Foreign Secretary)

4. Overuse

Like all good things, similes and metaphors should be used in moderation. If you’re using several per paragraph, that’s probably too many. Use them conservatively for maximum effect.

That's everything you need to know about when to use metaphors vs. similes in your writing.  Do you have a metaphor or simile that you are particularly proud of?  Let us know in the comments below! 

 


 

About the author:

Claire Wilkins is a freelance copywriter and editor from New Zealand. She loves to write about travel, health, home, and proper punctuation. After a career in financial services spanning almost three decades, Claire left the corporate world behind to start Unmistakable - her writing and editing business. She creates website copy, blogs, and newsletters for creative agencies and small businesses, and specialises in polishing existing content until it shines. In her spare time, Claire enjoys cloud-spotting, singing in the car and editing video. You can find her at www.unmistakable.co.nz and https://www.facebook.com/UnmistakableNZ/.

Recommended articles

More recommended articles for you

March 22, 2025 4 min read

I’ve spent years writing while secretly fearing that a single misplaced word would expose me — not just as a bad writer, but as a fraud.

My background is originally in photography, and I see it there, too. A photographer I know recently posted a before-and-after comparison of their editing from 2018 versus now, asking if we also saw changes in our own work over the years.

Naturally, we should. If our work is the same, years apart, have we really grown as artists?

So why is that the growing, the process of it, the daily grind of it, is so painful?

So why is that the growing, the process of it, the daily grind of it, is so painful?

The Haunting

Hitting “publish” on an essay or a blog always stirs up insecurity — the overthinking, the over-editing. The fear that someone will call me out for not being a real writer.

I initially hesitated to make writing part of my freelance work. My background is in photography and design. Writing was something I gravitated toward, but I had no degree to validate it. No official stamp of approval.

Like many writers, I started with zero confidence in my voice — agonizing over edits, drowning in research, second-guessing every word.

I even created a shield for myself: ghostwriting.

I even created a shield for myself: ghostwriting.

If my words weren’t my own, they couldn’t be wrong. Ghostwriting meant safety — no risk, no vulnerability, just words without ownership.

I still remember the feeling of scrolling to the bottom of an article I had written and seeing someone else’s name, their face beside words that had once been mine.

The truth is, I always wanted to write. As a kid, I imagined it. Yet, I found myself handing over my work, letting someone else own it.

I told myself it didn’t matter. It was work. Getting paid to write should be enough.

But here’s the thing: I wasn’t just playing it safe — I was slowly erasing myself. Word by word. Edit by edit. And finally, in the by-line.

I wasn’t just playing it safe — I was slowly erasing myself. Word by word. Edit by edit. And finally, in the by-line.

The Disappearing Act

This was true when I was writing under my own name, too. The more I worried about getting it right, the less I sounded like me.

I worried. I worried about how long an essay was (“people will be bored”), finding endless examples as proof of my research (“no way my own opinion is valid on its own”), the title I gave a piece (“it has to be a hook”), or editing out personal touches (“better to be safe than be seen”).

I built a guardrail around my writing, adjusting, tweaking, over-correcting. Advice meant to help only locked me in. It created a sentence rewritten to sound smarter, an opinion softened to sound safer, a paragraph reshaped to sound acceptable.

I built a guardrail around my writing, adjusting, tweaking, over-correcting.

But playing it safe makes the work dull. Writing loses its edge.

It took deliberate effort to break this habit. I’m not perfect, but here’s what I know after a year of intentionally letting my writing sound like me:

My work is clearer. It moves with my own rhythm. It’s less shaped by external influence, by fear, by the constant need to smooth it into something more polished, more likable.

But playing it safe makes the work dull. Writing loses its edge.

The Resurrection

The drive for acceptance is a slippery slope — one we don’t always realize we’re sliding down. It’s present in the small choices that pull us away from artistic integrity: checking how others did it first, tweaking our work to fit a mold, hesitating before saying what we actually mean.

And let’s be honest — this isn’t just about writing. It bleeds into everything.

It’s there when we stay silent in the face of wrongdoing, when we hold back our true way of being, when we choose work that feels “respectable,” whatever that means. It’s in every “yes” we say when we really want to say “no.”

If your self-expression is rooted in a need for acceptance, are you creating for yourself — or for others? Does your work help you explore your thoughts, your life? Does it add depth, energy, and meaning?

My work is clearer. It moves with my own rhythm. It’s less shaped by external influence, by fear, by the constant need to smooth it into something more polished, more likable.

I get it. We’re social creatures. Isolation isn’t the answer. Ignoring societal norms won’t make us better writers. Often, the most meaningful work is born from responding to or resisting those norms.

But knowing yourself well enough to recognize when acceptance is shaping your work brings clarity.

Am I doing this to be part of a community, to build connections, to learn and grow?

Or am I doing this to meet someone else’s expectations, dulling my voice just to fit in?

The Revival

Here’s what I know as I look back at my writing: I’m grateful for the years spent learning, for the times I sought acceptance with curiosity. But I’m in a different phase now.

I know who I am, and those who connect with my work reflect that back at me — in the messages they send, in the conversations we share.

I know who I am, and those who connect with my work reflect that back at me — in the messages they send, in the conversations we share.

It’s our differences that drive growth. I want to nurture these connections, to be challenged by difference, to keep writing in a way that feels like me. The me who isn’t afraid to show what I think and care about.

So, I ask you, as I ask myself now:

If no one was watching, if no one could judge, what would you write?

If no one was watching, if no one could judge, what would you write?

March 20, 2025 6 min read

A book deal without an agent? An agent offer after a book deal? Learn how Writer Bobby Miller took his publishing journey into his own hands. 

March 19, 2025 1 min read

We've chatted with the creatures of Middle Earth to discover their writing preferences and which Freewrite devices work best for each of them.

Find your Lord of the Rings identity and discover your next Freewrite.