“The cannonball scythed through the battalion like a machete through hapless brush.” “Waking up, I felt like I’d crawled from warm sands to an icy tide.” “He smelled like month-old cheese served on a day-old sock.”

Figures of speech. The simile. Describing everything as if it were everything else. The masters produce the right image, the right feeling, the exact thing they want you to experience. The failures fail, failing like a failure at life who failed failing.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

What is the key to using a good simile (like “life is like a box of chocolates”)? 

—Gerald Siegel, Hamilton, Ont.

(Note: a simile is a figure of speech comparing two different things, usually using “like,” “as,” or “kinda like, y’know, like.” If you didn’t know that by now, then I don’t know what to tell you or your excuse for an English teacher.)

A good simile is like a candle that burns forever, even burning your house down when you don’t want it anymore.

A bad simile is like a flashlight that helps you see in the dark.

A good simile is like a fireproof raincoat, keeping you alive when it’s raining cats, dogs, and fireballs.

A bad simile is like an umbrella that doesn’t let rain hit you.

A good simile is like making out with a sandbox.

A bad simile is like an awkward lover.

A good simile is like tasting a hint of honey when you lick an envelope seal.

A bad simile is like a pleasant surprise when you least expect it.

A good simile is like a tiramisu that puts you over the blood alcohol limit.

A bad simile is like a better dessert after a good meal.

A good simile is like breaking your enemy’s legs, then breaking his wheelchair later on.

A bad simile is like getting sweet revenge.

A good simile is like eating the ants at your picnic.

A bad simile is like taking lemons and making lemonade.

A good simile is like your toast landing butter side up.

A bad simile is like the sun breaking through on a cloudy day.

A good simile is like a frozen rose.

A bad simile is like a classic case of unrequited love.

A good simile is like being struck by lightning while winning the lottery.

A bad simile is like a double rainbow all the way across the sky.

A good simile is like a fat boy furiously digging Earth’s last corn dog out from under the car seat.

A bad simile is like being so hungry you could eat an elephant.

A good simile is like eating an apple pie wrapped in an American flag on the 4th of July.

A bad simile is like showering in crisp lemonade while caressing the bosom of a one-eyed snowman.

A good simile is like a hayride in a bouncy castle with the microwave on medium-rare.

A bad simile is like a cage match between a mechanical platypus and I don’t want to visit the dentist anymore.

A good simile is like a Canadian petrol boy shock-inhaling the leafy green to get the motor kicked up and guzzling that Molson can.

A bad simile is like riding a gumball machine on a one-legged icicle and filling a Toyota’s airsick bag with purple-fun cotton candy while taking it to a tornado party of vanilla bacon and hippopotamus puppeteering.

Crap, I think this thing broke again.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and directly compared to a herd of coati mundi trampling the foetid excesses of poor writesmanship. 

I’m not sure if there’s a such thing as “Driving Improvement School.” If there were, I’d be recommending it to every driver I know, since I’m the only one who knows how to drive on the roads here, there, and everywhere. But with driving improvement, there’s a presupposition in place: you have to know how to drive.

Same thing with writing improvement school—oh, wait, people opt for this when they don’t know how to write at all. If you’re looking to improve writing, you’d better know how to write first, whichever way you go about it.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

I recently retired from a career in technical writing, but I’d like to try writing fiction for a change, just for the sake of doing it. How would you recommend making the transition from the technical background to fiction writing (or something similar)? I feel as if my writing experience would be helpful, and I’d like to make it work for me.

—Arthur Reeves, Roswell, Ga.

Throughout my infanthood and childhood, I often wondered how I would come to the craft of creative writing from a technical writing background. Ok, that never happened. I’ll admit though, there’s a fair bit of cognitive downshifting and upshifting needed for such a change. But just as flooring the gas pedal and shifting from first gear straight to seventh gear would wreck your transmission (I think), I wouldn’t recommend too drastic a change right away.

Here’s your solution: Write some technical documents and manuals through the lens of magical realism. Use a familiar form to bridge to the unfamiliar.

How about The Human Cookbook: Creative Recipes for a Cannibalist Kitchen? Set in an era of postmodern post-tolerance, you’d have an influential guide to making comfort food classics like “Oven-Roasted Tibilalus Anterior” (served with a piquant au jus) and “Chianti Braised Latissiumus Dorsi.”

Or you could go for something with broader appeal: 100 Great Theoretical Science Fair Projects for Kids (and their Parents!). In the bizarro future, I will have bizzaro wanted my kids to try out live-action cross-species genetic mutation (transmogrifying a pet hamster into a pet flying Nile monitor), and homemade hydrogen bombs (involving a microwave, a trashcan, non-dairy powdered creamer, Wonder® Enriched Uranium, and [REDACTED]).

Then again, if you’ve spent your career writing documentation, you could draw up a manual for the RainbowTronics™ Unicorn Sentinel 5000 20xV6. There will come a time when the unicorn will no longer be the hunter, but the hunted. When we deploy Sentinels to mow down these unicorns, we’ll need a practical guide on hand for Sentinel operators. It’d range from basic use (changing the viewscreen from the visible spectrum to the unicornvisible spectrum for hidden forest tracking) to advanced operations (alternating the frequency of the anti-ROYGBIV phasers, preventing the target unicorn[s] from adapting to the phaser fire). Since the impact of a unicorn’s horn registers over 9,000 pounds of force per square inch (at ramming speed), a primer on defensive protocol would be paramount. You could round it out with sections on maintenance and modular additions, especially for those bicorn encounters. Dangerous creatures, those bicorns.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and reassembled using the steps on pages 56-57 in Hodge Kvorak’s “Miss Assembly’s Guide to Blog Assembly.” 

If you woke up one day and discovered that you could write well, then I’d say you woke up and discovered how good of a liar you were. Or you’re legitimately delusional, currently seeking treatment. I’ll wish you the best.

One-punch KOs, levitation, invisibility, showering, being a boss: these things don’t come naturally. They take practice. They don’t just happen. Neither does writing. You’re not good at it, even if you woke up thinking you were. You don’t get good at it by going back to bed and waking up again thinking you’re good at it.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

I don’t mean to brag, but—

(Yes, you do. But do go on.)

since I’ve spent the last few years sculpting my body, I know the value of exercise and routine when it comes to achieving a goal.

(This blog isn’t called “Bodybuilding All Wrong,” but I’ll keep the idea for reference.)

I’d really like to improve my writing. What kind of “exercises” can you recommend to practice getting in “writing shape?”

—Blane Renner, Gainesville, Fla.

Change your name to “Blade Runner.” Start with that.

I’m with you on sculpting a perfect body, having done so myself. Once I reached that rarefied pinnacle of peak fitness, toning my once pathetic body into a paragon of godlike perfection, I focused on writing instead. My body has reached the limit of flawlessness, but the mind has no such limit.

As far as writing exercises go, they’re similar to how you’d exercise in the real world outside of the word processor and/or internet. You don’t throw a 98-pound weakling right to the bench press, nor do you subject a beast (like me) to concentration curls using a 100-pound dumbbell. Maybe a 10-pound dumbbell, if we’re talking about mortals here.

Unfortunately, writing isn’t a muscle. Raw exercise won’t cut it. It’s a skill that takes refinement and practice.

Exercises for wimps:

(If you haven’t written a [good] novel or a good anything, then start here, wimp.)

1) Character sketches.

Invent a person, draft a rough idea of who he/she/it is with quick strokes of introspection. Create them by the masses, kill off those who don’t inspire you. Unless they’re a transcendent creation, they deserve to die anyway.

2) Dialogue.

Generate a happening through dialogue. Keep that narrator in the box for now, practice the creation of substance from the eavesdropper’s perspective. There’s a reason hearsay’s banned from a court of law: it’s that good.

3) Creation from drafts.

Do most stories plop onto the paper in their fullest form? No. Jot some fragments down, sprinkle in a pinch of coherence. See if you can construct a complete work from the sporadic emanations of your creative faculties. The imagination doesn’t do the legwork in fleshing out an unassembled spate of dissimilar ideas. That’s where writing comes in.

Exercises for mortals:

1) Freewriting

An intentionally torturous ordeal, meant to shape the mind before the craft. Simple in theory, difficult in execution. Write (by hand) for twenty minutes straight. Without stopping. Not even to pee. You can soil your shorts if you have to. Freewriting builds the ability to keep a train of thought going long enough to pen down what you’re thinking. I dare you to try it offhand. Without thinking, you’ll reflexively stop, pause, determine what to write, then continue writing. That is why you fail. Your mind should be quicker than the pen. If it isn’t, you either write too fast or think too slow.

2) Constructing a recollection.

This doesn’t call for an eidetic memory, but it helps. Think of this as a retrospective diary, only less sissy. Using recreational acid, experimental prescription drugs for treating Alzheimer’s, or wild mushrooms in a forbidden forest, probe the recesses of your memory. If those memories aren’t yours, well, that’s fresh material to work with. Keep at it. You may need to meditate for two hours, possibly up to forty-two. Write what you remember, but do so with the intent of your reader experiencing the memory as you do. Writing from observation takes no skill. Your memory is the closest bridge you have between the real and the mind-constructed. Unless you’re copping out and only going to write what you’ve experienced firsthand, then this skill must be developed.

3) Forced constraint.

You’d find it difficult if you had to work without using both arms, or if you didn’t work with both parts of your brain. If you opt for imposing a constraint on your writing, you’ll find how much you’ll labor in this art, in contrast to how straightforward it looks if you don’t work with limits. Pick which suits your fancy: no word surpassing any amount of consonants, paragraphing within a word limit, taking out words that modify, or anything you think of that unnaturally stilts your writing.*

*Like not using the letter E. 

Exercises for beasts (like me):

1) Dictionary dash

This may be my least favorite exercise, but I can’t think of anything that will whip you into shape faster and build your pathetic vocabulary. It’s like mixing creatine and recombinant bovine growth hormone into your muscle milk before a rigorous workout. Effective. Check out your local library’s copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (Twentyleventh Edition, revision 3-and-a-half.5), then begin a narrative while using one of the OED’s entries per sentence. It may take close to a dozen passes to yield a decent work. After you’ve gotten comfortable with the dictionary dash, begin using entries out of order. Going through the OED from A to Z: far too easy for a beast (like me).

2) Practice novels

Sketches, scenes, mere parts of the whole are the province of wimps and mortals. Whipping out entire novels by the novelful will test your ability to build an idea and bring it to fruition. The NaNoWriMo ruse will only gauge this ability once a year, and only through the flighty, exuberant whims of wannabe weevils. And taking a month to churn out a novel? Unacceptable. That’s a luxury you’ll refuse to afford. Should only take a week at most. Enough of these practice runs and you’ll be nearing the apex of optimal writing shape.

3) Ultramarathon freewriting

Freewriting will soon fail to test your strength once you’ve reached the beast echelon. Ultramarathon freewriting will be your solution. While twenty minutes would be an admirable goal for the mortal, we aim for sheer endurance at this level. Typing’s allowable, only because you’ll be shooting for pain. Don’t be dismayed if you average in the two-to-three hour range, as you’ve handily eclipsed the standard milestones. Breaking the five-hour mark takes incredible discipline, but by then you’d have developed a thought train more continuous than an entire high school system. It takes tremendous effort to break each new barrier in running a mile (three minutes, two minutes, one minute, half-minute), so will it be in shattering the six-, ten-, twenty-, and forty-hour marks. Press on.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and incorporated into the “P90x for Poets” regimen.