Welcome to day 17 of 40 craft lessons.
We use simile quite often in our daily conversations. It helps us make ourselves understandable and makes our speech more vivid and colorful.
But a simile is a more versatile asset than adding color to the text. It can change the entire approach to a topic. Consider I Talk Like a River (2020, Jordan Scott, Sydney Smith), which follows a main character who stutters.
A complex topic! If you want to write a picture book that directly addresses it and gives advice, it would almost certainly become didactic, “sage on the stage” prose that no child would want to read. We have to take a back-door approach to tackle complex topics. This is when we need to use the section on literary techniques in our toolbox and take the appropriate tool out.
I Talk Like a River compares the stutter to a river: sometimes calm, sometimes turbulent, always flowing. It helps readers who have never faced this problem to feel the struggle.
Of course, a simile isn’t like a Swiss Army knife that you can use in any manuscript. But when you recognize the use case correctly, it will convey a meaning that resonates with readers.
I hope reading this blog post has given you new ideas. See you tomorrow for Day 18. If you would like to read these 40 craft lessons on WhatsApp, please join the channel.