Simile Poetry Prompts
Quick answer: Simile poetry prompts: 14 original exercises for writing comparisons with like and as that surprise, plus advice on precision, distance and revision.
Similes get treated as the metaphor's timid cousin, and that is unfair. The little hinge of 'like' or 'as' is not weakness; it is precision. A simile admits the two things are separate and then insists on the resemblance anyway, which lets a poet reach across huge distances safely. Burns could say his love was like a red, red rose because 'like' held the comparison steady. Remove the hinge and the same line becomes a claim you must defend for the whole poem.
The honest problem with similes is laziness of the second term. 'Cold as ice' and 'quiet as a mouse' are not images anymore, just verbal furniture. The fix is distance plus accuracy: the further apart the two things are, the more electricity crosses the gap, provided the resemblance is genuinely exact. These prompts push you toward far-fetched but true.
The Prompts
For every prompt, one rule applies: if you have heard the comparison before, you may not use it. Reach past the first three similes that occur to you; those belong to everybody.
- Write a poem of ten similes for the same rain shower, each drawn from a different room of the house: rain like the kitchen, like the airing cupboard, like the hall.
- Describe a relative's laugh with three escalating similes, the first domestic, the second industrial, the third astronomical, and stop there.
- Complete 'Leaving home was like' with a simile from cookery, then write the poem that proves the resemblance in specific, buttery detail.
- Write a poem where every simile's second term comes from your own street: as patient as the postbox, like the ivy taking the fence one slat a year.
- Describe falling asleep in six similes that get progressively shorter, the last only four words long.
- Choose a difficult person you love and describe them only in similes drawn from weather at sea, without ever using the word storm.
- Write 'Grief is like a supermarket trolley' and then earn it: the wheel that pulls left, the coin you must surrender, returning it across the dark car park.
- Build a poem where each simile is corrected by the next line, 'like a bell, no, like a bell heard underwater, no, like the pause after a bell', arriving somewhere exact.
- Describe a newborn's grip using a simile from carpentry, then a courtroom, then a religion, and let the three sit together without comment.
- Write a self-portrait in five similes where the second terms are all tools in a shed, and let the reader learn which tool you fear becoming.
- Take the tired simile 'as good as gold' and write the poem of a child who actually was, the vault, the weighing, the biting to check.
- Describe the sound of your parents' language, or your grandparents', with similes only from music and food, ending on the dish you never learned to make.
- Write a poem in which the moon refuses your similes one by one, and the last line is what the moon says it is actually like.
- Compose ten similes for tiredness gathered from one commute: like the bus kneeling at the stop, like the ticket fading in a pocket, and onward to your own.
How to Use These
Warm up with volume. Before starting any prompt, set five minutes on a timer and write fifteen similes for one ordinary object in sight, a lamp, a shoe, a mug. The first five will be dreadful, and that is the exercise working: dreadful must be emptied out before strange arrives. Then take your chosen prompt and draft the poem, keeping every simile in for now, even the wobbly ones.
Revision is where similes earn their keep. Test each one with two questions: is the resemblance exact, and does the second term bring its own atmosphere the poem wants? A simile can be accurate and still wrong, since comparing a christening to a job interview is exact but imports a chill you may not intend. Cut until only similes that pass both tests remain, and never let two similes sit in one line unless the collision is the point.
What poets can take from this
- Reach past your first three comparisons; they are everyone's first three.
- Make the two things distant but the resemblance exact.
- Check what atmosphere the second term smuggles in besides the resemblance.
- Limit yourself to one simile per line and a handful per poem.
- Turn your best simile of a draft into the poem's title and see what changes.
Try it yourself
Write a poem called 'Like', in which someone who has just received enormous news, good or bad, keeps failing to finish the sentence 'It feels like', and each abandoned simile brings the reader one step closer to the news itself, which is never stated.
Questions
What makes a good simile in poetry?
Distance and accuracy together. The two things compared should be far apart, so the link surprises, yet the resemblance should be so exact the reader nods. 'Quiet as a held breath before a result' works because the quiet is genuinely that kind of quiet.
Can a poem have too many similes?
Easily. Each simile asks the reader to leave the scene and visit the second term, and too many trips exhaust attention. Most short poems support two or three strong similes. If every line has one, the comparisons start cancelling each other out.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated September 2026.
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