Bad Writng from Student Essays

Clear Metaphors from Student Essays:

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 land mine or something.

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had it's two other sides gently compressed by train doors.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances
like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a
bowling ball wouldn't.

Murphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag
filled with vegetable soup.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

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 Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

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 Crayola crayon.

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was
the East River.

Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap,
only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law 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.

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 fire hydrant.

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 ATM.

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around
with power tools.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard
bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was
room-temperature Canadian beef.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple
it to the wall.