To simile or not to simile.
When deciding if you want to make use of a certain writing technique, always start by evaluating whether it benefits (or harms) the story you want to tell.
Metaphors and similes can be fantastic tools. But so can simply using the specific strong words you mean.
Describing a massive, lumbering figure as being like something that’s massive and lumbering will usually paint the same picture as flat out saying it’s massive and lumbering. (Just don’t describe your massive, lumbering figure as “big” because you’re now painting an entirely different picture, and one with far less impact).
There are certain situations were figures of speech provide a very beneficial extra bit of flavor you can’t get through strong words. Things like:
- Witty comedies. Example, Douglas Adams, “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.”
- Characters with vastly (or even impossibly) different backgrounds than the reader. Example, the mer-like protag from my novel Pearl, “Her skin reminds me of the blotches of a flounder, patches of light on dark.”
- Times when a feeling or concept cannot be painted so emotionally any other way. Example, Margaret Atwood, “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.”
- In dialogue. Though your narrator/narration might not include many figures of speech, they might still be a neutral part of some character’s voice.
Even if you don’t plan to use figures of speech (or any other writing technique) yet, learning to write with them will give you a new, very useful tool you can pull out if ever you need it.
And once you know how to use vivid figures of speech in your writing and have tested them out, you can more accurately look at your work and decide it does exactly what you want it to without them.