Really Good "Bad" Writing

Claire and I, former teachers that we are, got a big laugh out of this collection of Really Bad Analogies that came from stories written by high school students. I think you will as well. Remembering papers I've graded back in the day, I fear that a few of these lines may be "quite innocently" bad. But I'm sure you'll agree that most of them are so cleverly, exquisitely bad that the writer just had to have done it on purpose. Raymond Chandler, eat your heart out.

Let me drop in right here a few of my favorites and you can go on over and find yours.

* Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.

* He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.

* 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.

* The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.

* He spoke with the 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.

* The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

* The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.

* Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.

* They were as good friends as the people on “Friends.”

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