Craft Glossary · term

The "the way…" simile

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Plain English: The construction the way [something] [does something] — "the way dust settles", "the way a door closes when no one is coming back", "the way she always did when cornered." A legitimate comparison that LLMs reach for compulsively as their default simile machinery. Often the single most frequent tic in a long AI draft.

Rule: Cut roughly half. Keep only the comparisons that could not be replaced by a direct statement or a plain metaphor without losing meaning — typically ~40% survive a brutal pass. Break clusters first (three "the way" sentences in one paragraph is never three earned comparisons).

Fail: Simile wallpaper — every abstraction dressed in a faux-poetic comparison. The same shape every time — the way X Ys repeated until the reader hears the template, not the scene. Comparison instead of action — describing how something felt the way something else feels instead of rendering the feeling.

BAD → GOOD:

BAD: The news landed the way a stone lands in still water.

GOOD: The news landed. She didn't move.

BAD: He watched her the way a man watches a door he isn't sure will open.

GOOD: He watched her. His hand stayed on the latch.

See: LLM tics & tells — catalog · Cadence · Generic over specific · Tic / machine-tell

Arjuna Badger Press · Craft Library

Glossary · Doctrine · Anti-patterns · Triptych form · LLM tells

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