Zelda's Inferno exercise: Chandlerean similes about people. I recently re-read Raymond Chandler's The High Window and was blown away by the line "She had eyes like strange sins." So I had the Zelda's crew try their hand at vivid similes. Here's my attempt.
She was as well-balanced as a slinky: one little push and she'd tip over and over and over until her energy ran down.
He was quiet, in the way that a car with a finely tuned engine and a tailpipe scraping on the ground is quiet.
She stuck to him like pine sap -- only alcohol could remove her.
His sense of virtue was like aluminum foil, shiny but thin and cheap and easy to tear and crumple.
His brain was like an old TV with a broken vertical hold, you could make out the picture but it kept jumping, scrolling up.
She entered the room like a bag of running chainsaws thrown through the door.
She had remade herself after the move, but the old woman still showed through, like the old color poking out under a sloppy paint job.
I thought someone had opened the door to let the heat out, but it was just her walking in.
His eyes were as flat as a beer left to sit out all night.
Her voice cut like a piano-wire garrote.
She looked as tough as stone, but under pressure crumpled like paper painted with a faux-stone finish.