Which Original Analogy is Best?

After a false start yesterday, there’s a new poll in place today. If you voted yesterday or early this a.m. before I removed the original poll, please do vote again. (Sorry for the inconvenience.) Otherwise, please respect our rules: Only one vote per person.

Thanks to everyone who entered the WU Best Original Analogy Contest!

It was tough, with over 130 entries, but Kath and I narrowed the field to our favorite 15.

Now it’s your turn. Please choose your favorite from the list, then scroll down to the poll, and choose the matching number from the list. Click Vote, and you’re done! We’ll close the survey on 2/13 and officially crown the winner on 2/14. (Don’t forget: Winner gets their choice of a specified Kindle, Nook, or load of craft books. Deets here.)

Our favorite 15:

1. Her tears fell dark, heavy, and in profusion, like dead grackle birds from the Alabama sky.
2. As she walked away, her husband gazed longingly at her, admiring how her butt moved against the tight fabric, like two bull dogs fighting in a burlap sack.
3. He was as close to the point as Russia was to Alaska.
4. She was the Staples of first-dates, well-stocked and complete with her own Easy Button.
5. His technique in bed was like a Rube Goldberg construction: far more complicated than necessary.
6. Jessi waited in line for Adriano’s autograph. They were SO meant for each other, like Edward and Bella, except he was a cowboy, not a vampire. And she didn’t speak Portuguese.
7. Like a cat with an empty food bowl, Roger threw himself into the middle of Simone’s stride and hoped for the best.
8. It was just as he feared. His mother-in-law was there, sitting in the dead-center of his hard-earned leather sofa, drinking his coffee, judging his wife. She moved on a loop–a repetitive cycle of re-positioning of her rump, accompanied by a slow mouth-opening motion, not unlike an animatronic hippopotamus on the Disneyland Jungle Safari.
9. Bus drivers are the substitute teachers of the adult world: they’re temporary, they’re in charge, and they’re usually bat-shit crazy.
10. The old man ignored my question. He turned his back on me and stared out the window, running his fingers through his thick white hair, over and over, until he was all fluffed up, like a late summer dandelion gone to seed.
11. His five-hundred dollar words were as baroque and overcompensating as a one-eyed man with a unibrow.
12. He would have described her as tweet–enough of a statement to lead him on, but in conversation, she capped out at 144 characters.
13. The look he gave her was cold as a brass toilet seat in Fairbanks, Alaska.
14. She gave him a look as withering as that of a literary agent encountering the phrase “fiction novel” in a query.
15. The glare of the setting sun through her windshield was like the blinding light that comes when sunlight shines upon Edward Cullen’s ridiculously sparkling, alabaster-and-diamond skin when he moves out of the shadows of the forest and into the grassy field where he and Bella lay in what has to be the most uncomfortable position known to man as they crush the pretty purple wildflowers.

The poll:

(polls)

Thanks for a great contest, everyone.

Photo courtesy Flickr’s Lauren Manning

Therese Walsh

Therese Walsh (she/her) co-founded Writer Unboxed in 2006 and is the site’s editorial director. She was the editor of WU’s only book, Author in Progress, and runs the Writer Unboxed UnConference.

Her second novel, The Moon Sisters, received starred reviews and was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal and Book Riot.

Learn more about Therese on her website, and sign up for her newsletter to be among the first to hear about any new projects.

www.theresewalsh.com/