A comparison using 'like' or 'as' that makes the unfamiliar feel familiar and the familiar feel new.
A simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things using the words 'like' or 'as.' It's the more explicit sibling of metaphor - where metaphor says 'the moon is a lantern,' simile says 'the moon is like a lantern.' That small connective word matters, because it lets the reader hold both things in mind simultaneously rather than collapsing them into one.
Similes are your fastest route to making a reader feel something specific. They translate abstract experiences into concrete images. When you write 'the silence pressed on her like a wet wool coat,' the reader doesn't just understand the silence - they feel its weight and texture. Master simile, and you can make any sensation transferable.
"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places" - Hemingway, known for restraint, used similes like precision instruments, always earning their place.
"We slept in what had once been the gymnasium" and throughout the novel, Atwood layers similes that compare Gilead's reality to the remembered world, creating constant dissonance.
Carver's similes are famously plain and surprising at once - ordinary comparisons that cut deep because they come from the world his characters actually inhabit.
If you've heard it before ('brave as a lion,' 'cold as ice'), it's dead on arrival. The whole point of a simile is to spark a new connection in the reader's brain.
A simile should make something clearer, not muddier. 'The algorithm moved like a postmodern jazz ensemble' only works if your reader knows postmodern jazz.
Three similes in one paragraph and your reader starts drowning in comparisons. Pick the moment that needs it most and let the others breathe.
Write a scene describing a character walking into a room for the first time. Draft it once with no similes at all. Then rewrite it, adding exactly three similes - one for a visual detail, one for a sound, and one for a feeling. Compare the two versions and notice which moments benefited most from the comparison.