How to write metaphors...

[dplax]

These are (allegedly) metaphors from actual GCSE essays: Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer. She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't. McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a paper bag filled with vegetable soup. Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze. Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the centre. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hotgrease. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left York at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55mph, the other from Peterborough at 4:19 p.m.at a speed of 35mph. The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the full stop after the Dr.on a Dr Pepper can. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play. The red brick wall was the colour of a brick-red crayon. Even in his last years, Grandpa had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut. The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portionof Family Fortunes. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do. The plan was simple, like my brother Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while. "Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a student on 31p-a-pint night. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something. Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from "I Can'tBelieve It's Not Butter." She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up. It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before. The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Glenda Jackson MP in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Robin Cook MP, Leader of the House ofCommons, in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the suspension of Keith Vaz MP. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behindher, like a dog at a lamp post. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free cashpoint. The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium. It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with their power tools. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a dustcart reversing. She was as easy as the Daily Star crossword. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature British beef. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs. Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

[Melusine]

If these were from actual GCSE exams, those kids would have been pretty damn smart and accomplished humourists. [img]tongue.gif[/img]
Looks to me like these are quite deliberate attempts to be funny. Most of them very much succeeded, though! [img]smile.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

[ 04-22-2004, 12:07 PM: Message edited by: Melusine ]

[dplax]

I'll ask the one part I did not understand:
What is a GCSE essay?

[ 04-22-2004, 12:10 PM: Message edited by: dplax ]

[Melusine]

Essays (for English, I assume) that are part of the GSCE exams (linking = quicker than explaining)

[Donut]

Many of these are similies not metaphors.

(Nitpicking hat off) [img]smile.gif[/img]

[RoSs_bg2_rox]

Its the equivelant of a higher exam, so that would be 5th year here, so what 12th grade or something, I dunno, dont do grades, but you would be 16-17 when you sit it

[Melusine]

Originally posted by Donut: Many of these are similies not metaphors. (Nitpicking hat off) [img]smile.gif[/img]

Thank you, I'll take that.
*dons hat*
It's spelled similes. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[dplax]

Originally posted by Melusine: Essays (for English, I assume) that are part of the GSCE exams (linking = quicker than explaining)

OK. Thanks.

[Vaskez]

LOL! Some of those are pretty funny. Actually, GCSEs are the General Certificate of Secondary Education exams which you sit in the UK when you are 15/16 right before you leave school. They are the last compulsory exams in British education.

It's only after you finish GCSEs that you realise what a piece of piss they are. I mean they are getting easier every year and pupils in other countries would laugh at their simplicity.

If anyone is asking I got 3 A*s, 5 As, 2 Bs and a C (in music [img]tongue.gif[/img] )

[ 04-22-2004, 02:58 PM: Message edited by: Vaskez ]

[Thoran]

Those made me laugh as hard as a guy who's just read something really funny!

[img]smile.gif[/img]