In addition to naming and detailing, writers sometimes use comparing to make their description more vivid for readers. Look again at Annie Dillard’s description of a weasel, paying attention this time to the comparisons:

He was ten inches long, thin as a curve,a muscled ribbon,brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard’s;he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs’ worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I didn’t see, any more than you see a window.

— ANNIE DILLARD, Teaching a Stone to Talk

Dillard uses simile and metaphor, both of which point out similarities in things that are essentially dissimilar. A simile expresses the similarity directly by using the words like or as to announce the comparison. A metaphor, by contrast, is an implicit comparison in which one thing is described as though it were the other.

Similes and metaphors can enhance the vividness of a description by giving readers additional information to help them picture the subject. For example, Dillard uses the word thin to detail the weasel’s body shape. But thin is a relative term, leading readers to wonder, how thin? Dillard gives readers two images for comparison, a curve and a ribbon, to help them construct a fuller mental image of the weasel.

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Comparing can also convey to readers what the writer feels about the subject. The following comparison from Brad Benioff’s description of Coach Rick suggests the writer’s feelings: “His arms were crossed, two medieval maces placed carefully on their racks, ready to be swung at any moment.” Sometimes the similes or metaphors writers use are suggestive but hard to pin down. What do you think Dillard means, for example, by comparing the weasel’s eyes to a window: “He had two black eyes I didn’t see, any more than you see a window”?