"I locked them inside so they could be in each other's arms, like how they always cling to each other like a coward to bully you." I think it looks fine but I don't like the word 'bully' any synonyms? oh, and I repeated 'each other' or that is fine as well. Nah I think the whole sentence is amateur. Help.
Well, your simile is non-sensical. They way it's written, you have two people clinging to each other in order to bully someone like a coward would, which doesn't make sense. I'm guess English might not be your first language? I think what you're going for it something more like: "I locked them inside so they could be in each other's arms, like cowards before a bully." But even that simile isn't terribly effective. There are better objects than bullies and cowards you could conflate with the sentiment of fearful clinging. Though there may be a bully context for the actual event that obviously doesn't show in this example.
"I locked them inside so they could be in each other's arms, like how they always cling to each other like a coward to bully you." What I do on sentences like this is reduce it down to the minimum, or near the minimum, and then decide how to build it back up. Close to the minimum: I locked them inside. They clung to each other. Slightly built up with some of your phrasing: I locked them inside. They clung to each other weeping, the cowards. The trick is to find a simple structure that communicates the basics, then you elaborate on it just where you feel it's needed. The bit about arms was implied by "clinging", so I didn't think it needed to go back in, but you could choose that instead if you wanted. And of course you could always force it into one sentence again if you had to have a single line. That's pretty easy.
The things that bother me about the original sentence are the doubling of the word like and the switch from singular to plural. Just as a purely technical fix it should be "how they cling to each other like cowards." How can two people be a coward? It would help a lot if we understood the context of the sentence. We don't know who or what are clinging to each other. It could be puppies or children or people or objects or anything. I would definitely remove the "like how"—that sounds really awkward. It might reflect the inarticulateness of the character, but then following it with the other like just kills the sentence. It would work better to say "So they could be in each others' arms, the way cowards... " But really I would cut it down farther to "I locked them inside so they could cling to each other like the cowards they are" (assuming that fits the larger context, which I don't know).
What might help is to understand what meaning comes across in your sentence. I'm reading it that the person delivering the line has locked 2 people inside somewhere, that they are clinging to each other because they've been locked up by someone with menace. They cling to each other in a way that reminds your narrator of how they weaponised their physical intimacy to bully him/her before they were locked up together. Narrator is deranged and they're in trouble. If that's not your meaning, maybe it's just me. If others get the same meaning, and it's not intended, then you may have a problem. As it is, the sentence is clumsy with too much repetition that doesn't contribute to dramatic effect...like and each other. Best advice? Pay heed to what the previous contributors have said.
Some context would help. Who are the characters? How old are they? Is it one man and a woman? What are they being locked in? As mentioned, the original simile makes no sense. I'm picturing two people being locked in a freezer and being forced to hold each other to delay death from hypothermia but I'm guessing that's way off.
that is correct. two people being locked in a cage but they were holding each other because they were scared not forced smtg like that cus they bout to get burn alive
