We have already talked about using adjectives in your writing. Another good way to describe something is to use a simile. If you’re not sure what a simile is, think of the description of Snow White. She had “hair as black as ebony, lips as red as blood and skin as white as snow.
A simile compares two things, so instead of just saying her lips were red, the writer tells us how red. There are two things to bear in mind when using similes:
First – you need to compare to something that everybody knows, so “as white as a newly-fallen snowflake” is a good simile because everyone knows what snow is like when it first falls, whereas “as white as my dad’s car” is not a good simile because unless we’ve seen your dad’s car we don’t know whether is a bright, shiny white because he polishes it every day, or whether it’s a dirty-white because he forgets to clean it.
Second – you need to compare it to something that is always the same, so “as red as a ripe strawberry” is a good simile because all ripe strawberries are red, but “as red as a pencil” isn’t good because not all pencils are red.
Have a go yourself now. How would you describe the length of Rapunzel’s hair?
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