Learn From a Paragraph That Made Me Stop Reading

I highlighted this paragraph the other day.

It comes from In a Sunburned Country, an entertaining travel book about Australia by Bill Bryson.

Do you find anything special about it?

“The Opera House is a splendid edifice and I wish to take nothing away from it, but my heart belongs to the Harbour Bridge. It's not as festive, but it is far more dominant — you can see it from every corner of the city, creeping into frame from the oddest angles, like an uncle who wants to get into every snapshot.” — Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country, pp. 55-56

Two things I find special:

1

Look at the first sentence. It expresses a simple idea: “I like the Sydney Opera House, but I prefer the Harbour Bridge.”

Add a bit of colour and personality to this idea and you’ll get a much more expressive sentence.

2

Look at the last sentence — “…like an uncle who wants to get into every snapshot.”

This is a simile (/ˈsɪməli/), a word or phrase that compares something to something else.

Great comedians use similes all the time to make us laugh. Great writers use them to make descriptions come to life.

I sometimes try to use similes but often end up falling into cliches and deleting the whole thing. I find them so hard to get right.

“Like an ankle who wants to get into every snapshot” makes me see a bridge like a human (nothing I’ve ever done before), entertains me with a creative idea, and reminds me that great writers think in a beautiful way.

Takeaways:

1. Try adding colour and personality to simple ideas. See where that takes you.

2. Experiment with similies.

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Thank you so much for being here.

Talk to you next week.

Fabio

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