Great Simile Contest: As Useful As - What?

Here we go again! It's time to announce this column's Great Simile Contest of 1995. Let us have a flourish of trumpets and a ruffle of drums.

Once again, for the sheer fun of it, this column invites readers to submit original similes. This is your chance, if not for fortune, at least for fame and glory.

This is how the contest works:

Sections One and Two are for everybody. In Section One, a prize of $100 will be awarded for the best simile for "useful." In Section Two, another $100 prize will go to the man, woman or child who devises the best simile for "quiet."

Section Three is for English classrooms in elementary and middle schools. A $100 prize will be awarded to the classroom that submits the best overall similes for "useful."

Section Four is for high schools. A separate $100 prize goes to the classroom that puts together the best similes for "quiet."

Must be original

Miscellaneous rules: Similes must be original. They must be contained in a complete sentence. Entries for "useful" and "quiet" should be on separate pages. All entries should be sent to the Great Simile Contest of 1995 in care of this newspaper. Be sure to include name, address and telephone number. The deadline is Nov. 26, the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

The primary object of this annual competition is simply to have a little fun with language. Many teachers find the contest a painless way to instruct their charges in the writing art. Perhaps the contest encourages all competitors to rev up their imaginations and see comparisons where none had been seen before.

Originality is the big thing. I morosely expect to see a thousand sentences informing me that something is as "useful as a Swiss army knife" or as "quiet as a mouse." These will win you no fame, no fortune and no glory. It is perfectly acceptable for similes to work in reverse, e.g., "as useful as a flat tire," or "as quiet as a Mexican band."

Keep in mind that the best similes are short similes. Ken Burger, sports editor of the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier, fashioned a nice simile at the time of the Ryder Cup golf matches last month. As the tournament began, he wrote, "tensions are wound tighter than a Titleist." Many old-timers will recall the fighter plane that "climbed faster than a homesick angel." Novelist John Logue once wrote of a night "as dark as the inside of a walnut."

The key to writing good crisp similes lies in looking intently at the world around us. Someone who had looked at butterflies - really looked at butterflies - was able to write later on of an old monoplane that landed "as softly as a butterfly with sore feet."

Look at everyday things

Commonplace things make the best similes. In our everyday world, what is really quiet? I think of sleeping children, ashes in a fireplace, slowly moving clouds. What is regularly useful? Turn your imagination to the husband or wife who is handy with tools, a set of mixing bowls, Bartlett's Quotations.

The good simile is packed into a sentence as tightly as a Porsche engine under its hood. Part of the art lies in trimming unnecessary words. One year, when we sought similes for "exciting," a contestant began with a good image: "as exciting as match point at the U.S. Open," and then spoiled it by tacking on, "at Flushing Meadow in New York City."

All set? Pick up your pens or pencils, belly up to your typewriter or computer, and think hard about quiet things and useful things. Remember the Nov. 26 deadline. Off we go!

(Copyright 1995, Universal Press Syndicate)

The Writer's Art by James J. Kilpatrick appears Sunday in the Scene section. Address contest entries, comments or questions to: Writer's Art, c/o Newsroom, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111.