Wednesday 17 February 2010

Student Essays.When you really want to be descriptive...but fail badly !

These are genuine excerpts from essays submitted by students.....as Neil from the young ones once famously said, "most metaphors won't stand close examination"...these look shaky from several nautical miles :-)
  • 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.
  • 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 hot grease.
  • 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 55 mph, the other from Peterborough at 4:19p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
  • 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, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.
  • Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
  • The plan was simple, like my mate Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
  • The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for 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 a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a landmine or something.
  • Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter."
  • She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
  • The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a lamppost.
  • 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.

Well, my sides split like a frog blown up with a straw when I read these...how about you ?

(courtesy of the Jardmail website...thanks for the smiles guys!)
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

These are so funny. I remember in a creative writing class, the teacher said to write a sentence that was comparable to the subject: Donkey.

Common decency forbids me retelling the comparisons.

Andy Ward said...

I think I may have a good idea of the metaphor that was used :-)
Thanks for taking the time to post your comment,nice to hear feedback on my blog :-)