What was it really like? Try not to try too hard.
The lights of the city streaked off below him like the luminous spokes of a warped wheel. An indistinctly outlined, pearly moon seemed to drip down the sky, like a clot of incandescent tapioca thrown up against the night by a cosmic comic. (Cornell Woolrich, The Bride Wore Black. Fortunately his writing is usually pretty plain.
We are prisoners of our belief systems and, if our belief systems are threatened, good evidence peels off our brains like a fried onion off Teflon. (How about “evidence SLIPS off our brains like fried onion off A TEFLON PAN”.)
Not quite hyperbole...
Something comes over writers when they want to mention high cheekbones or cut-glass accents. They frequently get the two confused. If you could grate Parmesan on Joely Richardson’s cheekbones she must have awful skin, poor thing.
"Joely Richardson (pictured) looks unnervingly similar to her mother, both angular and willowy, with cheekbones that could grate parmesan." Loren Hale has “cheekbones that cut like ice”. Cheekbones that you could cut cheese on. She had cheekbones that could grace the prow of a stealth fighter. (Allegedly from a book called Snow Crash.) Could cut diamonds. Could slice you if you got close enough. Looked as though she’d stuck a clothes hanger in her mouth. Could be seen from a mile away.
Writers also reach for hyperbole when trying to say that an actor’s performance was wooden. Quora suggests that "the kind description would be to say that the performer gave a studiously understated performance". However, writers tend to invoke Rentokil and the Forestry Commission and tie themselves into knots. Displays all the emotion of a plank of wood, wouldn't be out of place in a forest – these are mild examples.
And the same goes for scene-stealing and scenery chewing. "A common term for a scene where an actor's acting so damn hard that they're picking bits of scenery out of their teeth for days." (tvtropes.org) "It's time to wolf down the scenery like there's no tomorrow." "No scenery was actually harmed in the making of this movie." If you know of a better periphrasis, do let me know.
It’s extremely time consuming and most of the time it's like remonstrating with woodworm. (Simon Hicks)
My mother, clearly instilled with images of us all floating through the Alps, gave us Nimble once. Only once. It was like eating fog. (@ronmanagernottm)
Young Labour are paper dolls living in a house of cards. (@blackbirdpeeja, paraphrase)
A man 'realising he's a woman', whether after a fancy dress party or not, is on a level with my own realisation that I'm a small village in Cornwall with spectacular sea views. (@PhilBur69397549)
The only department store that appears to be still punching above its weight is Selfridges, but increasingly it looks like a beautiful, bejewelled buckle on a tatty leather belt covered in jelly-coloured paste. (Dylan Jones in the Evening Standard. By “paste” I think he means fake stones rather than jam. How about "looks like a genuine gold buckle on a rhinestone belt"?)
He responded with a silent look of horror and revulsion as if I had just told him I wanted to wear his face as a mask and go on a stabbing rampage. (Youtube commenter)
Starmer hints at baby steps to improve the current Brexit deal. RW media descend like swarms of angry wasps. (@edwinhayward)
Stop being disappointed when a celebrity folds like a cheap lawn chair over the cult ideology. (@blackbirdpeeja)
They go round and round in circles like a bluebottle with one wing. (Joolz Denby, paraphrase)
God bless how stupid men are about make up. It's like watching a gerbil grapple with long division. (@JustRowena)
Maigret is driven from one suspect to another like a pachinko ball.
Like frost in sunshine, your sins will melt away. (Ecclesiasticus)
Sometimes 22 Bishopsgate looks like a glacier mint and sometimes “like a grey Mars Bar”. (Bob Hoskins)
Patricia Highsmith’s self-designed house was like a “run-down municipal swimming pool”. (Charlotte Mendelson, Times 2023)
The bewildering poetry of the King James Bible... has likewise been replaced by modern verses of stunning blandness, each one more like a brochure for council services than the last. (Jemima Lewis, 2023)
I felt like the tail-end of a misspent life. (Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair)
My sister's puff pastry – like eating a wet book. (Benny Hill)
Truss delivering that speech with all the charisma of a regional manager announcing a consultation on redundancies. (@entschwindet)
She has the demeanour of a reserve junior spokes-creature for Number 10. (WUR)
As thick as a canteen cup. (@DaiBevan1)
He remembered where he had seen Celia Harland, and when. A picture rose before his eyes, and it seemed to strengthen like a film in a developing-dish as Hanaud continued. (AEW Mason, At the Villa Rose)
Her sound is that of a serpent on the move. (Jeremiah)
Our Government will try to cling to power like super-glued limpets. (Donal Savage)
A new library in Fayetteville is blank on several aspects. It looks like an East German insecticide factory. (@sharp_architect)
Skinny jeans look like an Alaskan gold-miner’s underwear.
He looked as if he had been hastily assembled by a child out of bricks. (Agatha Christie, Nemesis)
I have built a rockery to plant flowers in, so there should be some colour to the place instead of it looking like a non-descript part of the USSR. (Nigel Jarman)
An over-cleared garden is like a “Protestant cemetery”.
I read quite a lot of Judith Butler for my PhD, it's like trying to eat soup with a fork. (@FemmeLoves)
A period of cloying reconciliation worthy of the ending of the sort of cheesy film shown on long coach journeys in Mexico. (Luigi Amara)
More here, and links to the rest.
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