Similes/Metaphors in prose

Read these quickly, making a note of any you like, or any you think don't work in prose.

1. "He cranes himself nearer without moving either of his feet - looks increasingly like a ski jumper leaving the slope that will take him up inside thin air: that big downward slide that looks proper mad when you see it on the telly" (A.L. Kennedy)
2. "He sailed in on a sea of excuses" (Polly Samson)
3. [The dealer] "had the look of someone who might have debated wearing a cowboy hat to hawk his goods, but was persuaded out of it by a sensible person aware of cowboy hats and what they could do to a man's reputation" (Nicole Flattery)
4. "black as a sleeping whale" (Polly Samson)
5. "the sun rises like yeast from the bowl of the mountains" (Polly Samson)
6. "The morning's just-visible moon pulled the sea an inch inwards as if for a waltz" (Eley Williams)
7. “[the fenicular carriages are] built at an angle, like the dipping hat of someone who doesn't want to be recognised” (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
8. "He looked as if he'd been poured into his clothes and someone had forgotten to say 'stop'" (G.K. Chesterton)
9. "The road was very bleak, wandering like the handwriting of a dying person over the hills" (Richard Brautigan)
10. "The washing piling up like nasty thoughts" (Tobias Hill)
11. "grass sprouts from the rafters of the Big House now, like hairs from a pensioner's nose" (Caitriona O'Reilly)
12. "with such long legs that he looked like the afternoon shadow of somebody else" (Dickens)
13. "[a voice] like an English lesbian preventing some rude tribesman from maltreating a donkey" (William S. Burroughs)
14. "Individual snowflakes are dropping past the window like fluffy paratroopers" (Katherine Heiny)
15. “The big willow down by the river thrashes with outbreaks of silver, upturned leaves like startled fish that can't escape” (A.L. Kennedy)
16. "Puking like a fruit machine" (Joseph O’Connor)
17. [She sees a white carrier bag flapping] "like a happy ghost" (Nikki Gemmell)
18. "the couple next to me ... are snogging so furiously that they could have dived for pearls since they last drew breath" (Jane Costello)

Now list the factors that influenced your decisions – are they funny? True? Distracting? Puzzling? Cliché? Purple prose? If they don't work in prose, could they work in poetry?

Some people keep a list of similes that can be added to stories. I keep a list of half-similes. Here are a few of them

• like feeling for a pulse
• like the silence after a story’s read at a workshop
• like an arsonist lingering in the growing crowd of spectators
• like a password you have to change
• like phonelines across a busy road