WEP First Challenge–SPECTACULAR SETTINGS

August 24, 2015 by Angelika Schwarz 15 Comments

spectacular settings

Thank you Denise and Yolanda for your interesting challenge.

I seldom read a book with a magic marker in one hand, but with the book,

The White Oleander by Janet Fitch, I could hardly put both down.

I’ve chosen the following descriptions and scenes
that I thought were pretty exceptional, some even spectacular to share with you:

• I climbed on the roof and easily spotted her blond hair like a white flame in the light of the three-quarter moon.

• I sat at the empty drafting table next to my mother’s, drawing the way the venetian blinds sliced the light like cheese.

• For lunch, we drove into the hills and parked in the dappled shade of a big sycamore, its powdery white bark like a woman’s body against the uncanny blue sky.

• I imagined my soul taking in these words like silicate water in the Petrified Forest, turning my wood to patterned agate. I liked it when my mother shaped me this way. I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter’s hand.

• Out the window, the glow of the Hollywood sign was slightly blurred with June fog, a soft wetness on the hills raising the smell of sage and chamise, moisture wiping the glass with dreams.

• “You look like like a couch in an old-age home,” she said as we got in.

• …then went downstairs and swan in the pool warm as tears.

I wasn’t reading the book, I was painting it in my mind. Have you read the book? Were you just as enchanted as I was?  It inspired me, made me thoughtful, and tickled my own fantasy to create some similes for my own book.

Here are a few examples of my own similes from my just recently published novel,
WINGS ON HER HEELS.

• After driving through the bright, colorful countryside, the dark forest roads, with their hanging, gnarled branches, seemed to close in on them like gray ethereal tunnels. The morning dew, similar to a soft spring rain, dripped down the thin, haggard pines lined up in dense rows along both sides of the street. Like tiny flashlight beams, razor-blade sunrays fought their way through the thick growth and onto the wet pavement.

• As if she were on a ship pitching to and fro in high seas, the woman held on for dear life. Her damp dark hair, plastered in bizarre patterns along the sides of her gaunt face, pointed like wet arrows toward her frenzied eyes.

• Her legs were too short to hang down so she framed her view of the long corridor between her scuffed brown shoes, giggling when the mirrored images of nurses on the highly polished linoleum floors bumped into each other. She thought she was the only one who could hear their rubber soles squeak down the corridors like jungle birdcalls.

• And at the highest peak, each wave paused, standing still in time, as if taking one last breath before crashing down into the shuddering foaming mass of water, to slowly transform into serene, soft laps caressing the beach;

• Melanie clung to Anne’s shoulders, afraid to lose her friend, and soon felt strange hands grab ahold of her own coat’s shoulder padding. The line swayed back and forth, like a caterpillar finding its way over a slippery wall. They were soon caught up in the mesmerizing rhythm: right foot, kick, two steps forward, left foot, kick, one step back.

• Richard’s mother stepped out of the elevator. She gave her daughter-in-law a quick once over then craned her neck over Melanie’s shoulder to eye the living room. Her head bobbed up and down, reminding Melanie of an excited pigeon perched on a rainspout.