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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/48415
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Images, as I call them, are an important part of your prose.

Now, let's look at examples of bad images:

From [Onision's (from now on, Onii-san) book, Reaper's Creek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFGMBvIJ0iQ) :

> Maybe that current lead him to a gathering of logs, and assuming he had not already drowned, he was sucked under the logs, causing him to rapidly cease existing in the world as we knew it.

I might add other examples later.

I think you get the gist of it. An image here isn't painted with just colors but with mental connections and **associations**.

Unfortunately, Onii-san's writing is below mortifyingly atrocious, and while the terrible mental image was easy to spot, it didn't imply what would make for a good mental image. In fact, when I found a good mental image it also didn't help:

> I welcomed the silence like a warm blanket on a cold night.

Even the broken clock shows the right time twice a day.

**So, what makes a mental image good, impactful and vivid, instead of a laughing stock?**

Original score: 2