Simile Examples in Short Stories: 6 Comparisons That Earn Their Place
Quick answer: Simile examples from Poe, Joyce, Bierce, Gilman and Mansfield, showing how a 'like' or 'as' comparison is chosen to fit the narrator and change the scene.
A simile compares two unlike things using 'like' or 'as', and keeps them separate: the ray of light is like a spider's thread, not a spider's thread. That small hinge word is what makes similes feel spoken rather than declared, which is why first-person narrators reach for them so often. The danger is that similes are cheap to make and expensive to read; each one stops the scene for a moment, so it must pay for the pause.
Six similes worth the pause
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe has the narrator open his lantern a crack so that a single dim ray, like the thread of the spider, falls on the old man's eye. The simile carries the whole scene: thin, patient, predatory. It also tells us something about a narrator who thinks of himself as a spider.
Araby by James Joyce lets the boy feel that his body was like a harp and the girl's words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires. The comparison is exactly as overwrought as a boy in first love, and Joyce means it to be; the bazaar will later show what the harp was worth.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce has Peyton Farquhar hear a slow metallic percussion, which the story compares to a blacksmith's hammer on an anvil. It is the ticking of his own watch. The simile converts a small domestic sound into an execution bell.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman describes a spot in the pattern where two bulbous eyes and a broken neck stare at the narrator upside down. The wallpaper is compared to a body, and from that point the narrator is never alone in the room.
Bliss by Katherine Mansfield gives Bertha Young a pear tree in full blossom that seems to stretch up and point and quiver like the flame of a candle in still air. Bertha's happiness is that flame, and the reader who knows the ending feels the draught before she does.
The Dead by James Joyce closes with snow falling faintly through the universe, described as being like the descent of their last end upon all the living and the dead. The simile turns weather into mortality in a single clause and the story ends on it.
How to use it in your own story
The best similes belong to the person perceiving. Ask who is making the comparison and whether they would.
Common mistakes
The stock simile ('cold as ice', 'quiet as a mouse') is the obvious fault. Less obvious is the simile that requires more explanation than the thing compared, so the reader has to picture two hard things instead of one. Another is the register clash, where a plain narrator suddenly produces a comparison from a poetry anthology.
Where readers meet it today
Modern stories that handle simile with care include Raymond Carver's Cathedral, Flannery O'Connor's Good Country People, Amy Hempel's In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried and Denis Johnson's Emergency.
What writers can take from this
- Ask who is comparing, and give them only comparisons they could make.
- One simile per page is a healthy rate for a short story.
- The second half of the simile should be more concrete than the first.
- Cut any simile that a reader has met before.
- Test it: remove the simile and see if the sentence lost anything. If not, leave it out.
Try it yourself
Write a 500-word story narrated by someone with a trade. Use exactly five similes, every one drawn from that trade, and let the last simile reveal something about the narrator they did not intend to reveal.
Questions
What is an example of a simile in a short story?
In Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator lets out a single dim ray of lantern light, like the thread of the spider, onto the sleeping man's eye. The comparison tells us about the light and about the narrator.
How is a simile different from a metaphor?
A simile keeps the two things separate with 'like' or 'as'; a metaphor says one thing is the other. Similes feel spoken and tentative, metaphors feel asserted, so they suit different narrators.
How many similes should a short story have?
There is no rule, but most working editors start cutting when two appear in the same paragraph. A simile stops the action for a beat, so each one must pay for the pause.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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