For all you authors out there

I know your editors are always trying to get you to use better analogies and metaphors. You know, ones that are really good, that make sense, and to which readers can relate. So I thought I'd help you out, with a little help from some high schoolers (passed on from the man to die for).

Some of the good romance-related ones are near the end, so be sure to read all the way through. Doing my part to help you all out - just sayin'...

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 dryer without Cling Free.

He spoke with wisdom that can only come from experience,
like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar
eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it
and now goes around the country speaking at high schools
about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without
one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

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 center.

Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who tried his level best
to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but got
T:flw.quid55329.com\aaakk/ch@ung by mistake.

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.
traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at
a speed of 35 mph. (This one made me laugh out loud!)

A politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after
the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket
fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

John & 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 color 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 in the weather so
long it had rusted shut.

The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during
the interview portion of "Jeopardy!"

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

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.

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 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.

It came down the stairs looking very much like something
no one had ever seen before.

The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila
Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of
parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.)
in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the
impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one
slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an
oscillating electric fan set on medium.

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 was as easy as the "TV Guide" crossword.

Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten
to put in any pH cleanser.

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.

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.