Short answer: here is how to write a simile in four moves. Pick the one quality you want the reader to notice. Find something unlike your subject that has that quality in a vivid, specific way. Join the two with "like," "as" or "as if." Then run the check most guides skip: would this character, in this place and time, actually know the thing you compared it to? A simile that passes that test does two jobs at once. It describes the subject, and it tells the reader who is doing the looking.
The basic pattern
A simile compares two unlike things and announces the comparison. The Online Etymology Dictionary's entry for simile, read October 2, 2026, traces the word to Latin simile, "a like thing; a comparison, likeness, parallel," and dates it in English to the late 14th century. The name tells you the job: show a likeness.
Four forms cover almost every simile you will write:
| Form | Pattern | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun with "like" | X is like Y | "The lobby was like a fish tank." |
| "As … as" | X is as [quality] as Y | "The coffee was as thick as tar." |
| Verb with "like" | X [does something] like Y | "She argued like a lawyer billing by the hour." |
| "As if" or "as though" | X [does something] as if Z | "He held the letter as if it might bite." |
The "as … as" form is the most limited: it names the quality outright, so the comparison has to add something the adjective alone does not. The verb form is often the strongest, because it describes an action rather than a state.
Register and region: similes work in every register and in all varieties of English. In business or technical writing, use them sparingly and keep them plain; in fiction and speech, they carry voice.
How to write a simile, step by step
- Name the quality. Not "the storm" but "the storm's noise," or "how sudden it was." A simile that tries to capture everything about a subject captures nothing.
- List your character's world. Write down what this person knows well: their job, their town, their era, their age, their hobbies, what they fear. Ten nouns is plenty.
- Search the list for the quality. Which of those things is loud, sudden, cold, slow, fragile? The best simile usually comes from the list, not from your own head.
- Make it specific. "Like a dog" is vague. "Like a wet retriever that has just found you" is a picture.
- Check it against the stock list. If you have read the comparison many times ("busy as a bee," "cold as ice"), the reader has too. George Orwell's first rule in Politics and the English Language (1946, read on the Orwell Foundation's site October 2, 2026) is blunt: "Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print."
- Read the sentence without it. If the sentence is just as clear and just as vivid without the simile, cut it.
The "would this character know this?" test
Most simile advice stops at "be original." Originality is not enough, because an original simile can still be wrong for the person thinking it. Ask four questions.
- Era. Did the thing exist, and was it common, when your character lived? A pioneer cannot think of a jet engine. A medieval narrator cannot compare a crowd to a train station.
- Place. Would they have seen it? A character who has never left a desert town should not reach for an image of surf.
- Experience. What does their work or life teach them to notice? A carpenter sees grain, joints and warping. A nurse sees color, breathing and monitors. A teenager sees whatever their friends are talking about this month.
- Mood. A frightened character compares things to threats. A bored one compares them to other boring things. A simile is a window into how someone feels as much as what they see.
The test applies most strictly in first person and close third person, where the narration is filtered through one mind. An omniscient narrator has more freedom, but readers still notice when an image breaks the period or the setting.
How a simile reveals the observer: Chandler's tarantula
Raymond Chandler is the usual example of similes that carry a character's voice. In chapter 1 of Farewell, My Lovely (1940), as given on QuotePark (read October 2, 2026), Philip Marlowe describes a huge man he has just seen on the street: "Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food." Many quotation sites, QuotePark included, also show a shortened version ending "angel food cake"; the fuller sentence ends "angel food."
Look at what the simile does. It gives the quality (he stood out), and the image does more work on top: something dark and menacing set on something sweet and white. It also sounds like Marlowe, a Los Angeles private detective who reaches for a dry joke instead of a straight description. Put the same simile in the mouth of a shy schoolteacher and it would ring false.
Worked examples in three settings
The examples below are our own illustrations. Each takes a weak first draft, names why it fails the test, and offers a version that fits.
| Setting and narrator | Weak simile | Why it fails | Stronger simile |
|---|---|---|---|
| A wheat farm on the plains in the 1880s; a farm girl | "The hail was as loud as a jet engine." | Wrong era: she could not know a jet engine | "The hail hit the roof like seed corn flung at a tin pail." |
| A city hospital on a night shift; an emergency nurse | "The ward was as quiet as a mouse." | Stock phrase; tells us nothing about her | "The ward was quiet the way a monitor is quiet just before it alarms." |
| A small fishing boat in winter; a deckhand | "The captain's temper was like a volcano." | Wrong world: a deckhand thinks in weather and water | "The captain's temper came on like a squall, all at once and from nowhere." |
Each stronger version passes all four questions. The farm girl knows seed corn and tin pails. The nurse knows the false calm before an alarm. The deckhand knows squalls. The comparison now describes the subject and the speaker together.
Same subject, three narrators
To see the test at work, hold the subject still and change the observer. Here is a full moon on a clear night:
- The farm girl: "The moon came up as round and pale as a fresh cheese on the cellar shelf."
- The nurse: "The moon sat in the window like a light someone had forgotten to turn off."
- The deckhand: "The moon was out, bright as a deck lamp, and just about as warm."
None of these is the "right" simile for a moon. Each is right for one person.
Common mistakes, and their fixes
- The anachronism. An image from the wrong decade or century. Fix: check the era before you use a technology, a brand or a slang word. Even fixed phrases can be younger than they sound, as our page on the cold turkey origin shows.
- The explained simile. "Her voice was like gravel, rough and scratchy." The second half repeats the first. Fix: trust the image, or keep only the explanation.
- The weaker comparison. "The explosion was like a firework." A firework is smaller and gentler than an explosion, so the simile shrinks the subject. Fix: compare to something at least as intense.
- The pile-up. Three similes in one paragraph compete for attention. Fix: keep the best one.
- The collision. Two similes from different worlds in one sentence create the same problem as a mixed metaphor. Fix: keep one source of images per passage.
- The mangled idiom. A character who garbles a fixed phrase can be good characterization, but make sure the garble is deliberate. Our page on commonly misused idioms lists the errors readers will recognize.
A ten-minute exercise
- Choose a character and write ten nouns from their world.
- Choose one plain subject: rain, a crowded room, a stranger's smile.
- Write three similes for that subject using only nouns from your list.
- Cross out any that you have seen in print before.
- Read the survivors aloud in the character's voice. Keep the one that sounds most like them.
If you want to understand why stock comparisons feel stale, it helps to know how fixed phrases form and spread in the first place; our explainer on where idioms come from covers how references trace them.
Frequently asked questions
What is the easiest way to write a simile?
Pick one quality of your subject, find something unlike it that has that quality clearly, and join them with "like" or "as": "The hallway was as cold as a walk-in freezer." Then check that it is not a phrase you have read many times before.
How do you make a simile original?
Draw it from the specific world of whoever is speaking or narrating: their job, place, era and mood. A comparison taken from a character's own life is rarely a cliche, because few other writers have that character.
Can a simile use words other than "like" and "as"?
Yes. "As if," "as though" and "resembles" can all introduce a simile, as long as the comparison is between two unlike things.
How many similes should I use?
There is no fixed number, but one strong simile in a passage usually does more than several weak ones. If two similes sit close together, check whether they clash or compete.
What makes a simile bad?
The usual faults are cliche, an image the character could not know, a comparison weaker than the subject, and an explanation that repeats what the image already shows.