A Sample

“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.” Robert Frost, The Figure a Poem Makes
It might take a couple of tries to get it in the ball park:
Un-Written (attempt one):
​As a reader reads a poem, the poem transforms as it moves the reader, just as a hot surface melts a piece of ice, bringing it to move across the surface of a hot stove as if of its own accord.
Un-Written (attempt two):
​As a poem moves its reader, the poem transforms into a living thing that moves on its own, just as a hot surface (the reader) melts a piece of ice (the poem), bringing it to move across the surface of a hot stove as if of its own accord.
On the top of the network of controlling values, place the figural example.
Tropes, with metaphor as the epitome of tropes, have a two part structure: the tenor, the thing or concept to which the trope cross-appropriates another thing or concept (and its qualities): the vehicle. In this case, the vehicle is the "piece of ice," and the tenor is the "poem." If we think of the poem as a piece of ice, the properties of that piece of ice (vehicle) are "carried over" (cross-appropriated) to the poem (tenor).
The next step is to place an "un-written" version in its appropriate place in the network. In this instance, I am going to guess that this is a positively charged sentence--where the sentence values this living quality of a poem--which would make the sentence the "purpose" of one controlling value. I will then place it accordingly (see diagram to the right).
The most accessible way to proceed is to revise the un-written sentence, thinking backward from the purpose to the context of the controlling value. We want the contrary, negatively charged counter statement to this unwritten version, which would serve as the answer to the question: What could be the problem/context that the purpose resolves? ​
Attempt one:
​If we leave a poem unread, there will be no "heat," and the piece of ice will not melt, and the poem will remain frozen, stationary. 
Okay, but now how do I move to frame this sentence as a simile, to move the unwritten form toward the figural model?
​When a poem fails to move its reader, the poem remains dead, immovable, as if frozen in place, like a prehistoric mosquito encased in amber.
And then, a step closer to the original form of the sentence (Like _____ the_____verbs_____):
Like a mosquito encased in amber the unread poem remains an obscure curiosity. 
There are several options to explore here, all of which are good for our purposes:
One: You could look ever more closer at the original figure and find that we have still not gotten our version to reflect what is at work there. How do we perform that move where the poem rides on its own melting like a piece of ice on a hot stove?
Two: You could continue to unfold the opposing controlling value concerning what a poem is, contextualizing what Frost values (the form of the poem as primary, which the reader merely provides the heat to get it going) in a negative light to then justify an opposing purpose, developing both of these into fully expressed imitations of Frost's original form.

​So, for instance, if the value of the poem only exists in its being read, that presupposes a correct way to read the poem, and so excludes all others as inferior. This could be a negatively charged context, the purpose of which might be: any poem only exists in the act of reading, and so emerges much like Baron Munchausen does pulling himself and his horse out of a lake by his own hair. Here, rather than merely providing the "heat," the reader grants the world for the poem to be.
Three: Perhaps an easier route to take is to stay with the current context and purpose and begin to play with new possibilities beyond the subject of "poem."

For instance: Like a cat that cannot resist knocking a glass of water off the edge of a table John topples anything left unattended.

Or: Like a dog eagerly waiting at the door for his person to return John leaps to answer the phone whenever it rings. 
NOTE: some sentences will be easier to place into a network of controlling values than others. Use the network of controlling values as a heuristic--a method to come up with new things to say--and as soon as you experience entering the figure, and writing from it, you may feel free to abandon it. Like a raft that has brought you across the river any tool should be abandoned as soon as you've created what it was designed to let you craft.
Simile
“Ah, what a mistress, this Etna! with her strange winds prowling round her like Circe’s panthers, some black, some white.” D. H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia
Ah, what a friend, this wine! with its capricious whims offering us delights like a snake oil salseman, some the real thing, most of them not.
Metaphor
“Nay, to conclude upon a note of grandeur, it is by ignorance alone that we advance through the rough seas of this our mortal life.” Hilaire Belloc, In Praise of Ignorance
Well, to conclude upon a note of warning, it is by seeking to dominate the world that we expand the edges of the desert we are doomed to never escape.
Reification
“The winds that scattered the Spanish Armada blew English literature, which had been merely smoldering for generations, into a blaze of genius.” J. B. Priestley, Literature and Western Man
The rains that flooded my basement fed the writing of the following sentence, which had been waiting quietly to be heard, to then storm into being.
Personification
“Far off, a little yellow plane scuttles down a runway, steps awkwardly into the air, then climbs busily, learning grace.” Robert Penn Warren, Segregation
For hours on end, the grey and black wet-vac scoured the basement floor, inhaling fiercely the film of water that endlessly bubbled up from the concrete floor, then dumped dozens of gallons into the sump pump, gaining little or no ground in its battle against its implacable foe.
“Death stands at attention; obedient, expectant, ready to serve, ready to shear away the peoples en masse; ready, if called on, to pulverize, without hope of repair, what is left of civilisation.” Winston Churchill, World Crisis
The road remained steady; consistent, plain, eager for wheels, eager for the multitudes to wear it down; eager, when necessary, to deliver justice, especially for those incapable of giving it the attention she deserves.