2. Christopher Dewdney: Dialectic Criminal (On the use of clichés)
‘Good as gold’ – connections between value and wealth
I was feeling good. It was like finding your favourite desert, the finest variety, in the yellow-stickered reduced section.
‘As hard to find as a needle in a haystack’-- connections of difficulty in finding a minority in a majority
I couldn’t see it. It was as if I was lost and looking for my mother in a crowd where everyone wore the same cardigan and jeans. They all walked with the same concerned expression on their faces, yet none of them are ever her.
‘Flat as a pancake’ – connection with flatness
It was as flat as freshly wet sand. There is the impression that there were once sculptures there, before the tide. But now there is nothing. Just the sand.
‘Hard as nails’ – connection with solidness, toughness and immovability
He stared me down and did not move. It was as if he had become a brick wall, and with every word I spoke he became two times thicker and twice the height. There was no getting past him.
‘Faster than a bat out of hell’ – connection with recklessness and speed
He ran. He darted down alleyways like street mice run through gutters and drains, dodging raindrops as they go.
‘Meek as a lamb’ – connections with being gentle, docile and innocent
She sat trying to look innocent. She thought only of a single goldfish in its bowl, swimming meekly in circles, quietly and unsuspicious.
‘Charging around like a bull in a china shop’ – connection with clumsiness
Like a sightless sheepdog, confused in the dark, the boy ran onto the playground falling into the other children around him.
‘Silent as the grave’ – connection with unnerving noises
The room was quiet. It was as if every worker had been silenced by a bad punch-line, all of them too ashamed to acknowledge that the joke had ever been told.
INTERESTING COMPARISONS
She had a smile like a broken deckchair.
He had the personality of the common cold.
He danced like a lawnmower.
It was quiet as stone.
Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I’m nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water. — The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it’s there, because it can’t hurt, and because what difference does it make? — Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. ― The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Angela Carter
3. Dialogue conventions:
https://firstmanuscript.com/format-dialogue/
4. STORY IN A BAG (part 1)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/68ww3ktz4328k9w/short%20story%20in%20a%20bag.key?dl=0
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