The art and the science behind analogies

“You can stop using using the PB & J analogy. Just give it to me straight.”

It was the opening night of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” for IMAX theaters in North Carolina. There I was, standing in line with my fellow graduate students about half an hour before they opened the doors.

Naturally, we started talking about our research. What else is on the mind of a first year student?

I was still riding a little high from 1) surviving my far from stellar undergraduate career, 2) actually securing a chance to redeem myself and pursue a doctorate despite said flop, and 3) getting to continue the experience of student life with a stipend. I thought I was doing pretty well at that point, so being stopped mid-explanation with a terrible analogy took me down a few notches that night.

That, and PB&J’s were 90% of my diet. I didn’t say the stipend would let me live like a king.

So yeah, not all analogies are created equal so let’s talk about a couple of key points that will help you enhance the odds yours doesn’t crash and burn more often than not.

Here are three tips that have helped me tip those scales towards my favor.

The universal, the familiar, the commonplace

For an analogy to ring like a bell that echoes into the farthest reaches of a mind, it has to be something that is readily accessible to a majority of readers. For this to happen, you must have a deep connection with the culture, language, the customs of your audience.

The easiest point to start form is your personal experience in context of your target audience (amazing how that seems to be a recurring theme across so many communication strategies).

For example, everyone has experienced traffic on a regular basis. Whether they are drivers, passengers, or pedestrians, people have to encounter a path where others tread. From the toddler to the elder, we all have a destination in mind (even if it’s just the bathroom down the hall).

Other examples include cooking, cleaning, organizing…sounds a lot like daily life, right?

…Right?

Even if you’re living in your parent’s basement or crashing on a friend’s sofa until you can get back on your feet, these are daily activities that everyone must do on some level. These are the best places to create a connection and resonate with others with the concept you want to share.

Of course, you can’t just use generalities. Every analogy has its limit, and the more effective and impactful it is, the farther out this limit is (which brings us to the next point).

The accuracy, the alignment, the functional components

Daily life is composed of a series of routines. There are many variations, but the following is mine:

I roll out of bed at around 6:30 (sometimes sooner due to the cats, sometimes later also due to the cats). I make my bed, turn off the air filter, and pretend I actually got a decent amount of sleep.

After that, I tip-toe across the hall to my oldest kid’s room and flick the light switch on. He throws up the covers over his head, squirming into them like bugs when you upend a rock after a light rain. It’s while he’s frantically burrowing that I unceremoniously rip said covers away from him.

He proceeds to curl into a ball like a grub.

I turn away, head over to the dresser, and toss articles of clothing like I have a fully-loaded towel gun. The difference is that I’ve got only one person in the stands to target.

Depending on how he responds, I either leave him to get dressed as I head to my closet or I proceed to treat him like he’s a toddler again, dressing him myself as he squeals and begs for “just a few more minutes” of sleep. It’s either automated bliss or WWE. No in-between.

Five minutes later we’re flouncing out the door as we start the quarter-mile trek towards school.

That’s my morning routine.

I’ve sprinkled in a few analogies throughout this description. Each one is relatable because everyone has experienced some semblance of this activity on a regular basis. Whether you have children or not, you still have to parent yourself on some level. Adulting can be hard.

Accuracy of descriptions to link two concepts to align them. My analogy of my kid’s reaction to light aligned with bugs responding to being uncovered. I described both environments with enough detail for you to see them in your mind’s eye (as well as reminisce about your own experiences as a child). The functional components: his bed covers, the rock, the bugs, the dirt, all set the stage for the common response of burrowing away.

And that was just one of the many analogies here.

I confess that not all of them quite land well, but they serve to make the passage much more enjoyable than if I had simply listed each activity out with clinical precision.

That would’ve been boring.

Speaking of which, a good analogy needs one more component to land well.

The simple, the elegant, the clear

I have a confession.

The previous passage was originally much longer before I edited it down for brevity. You don’t need to know every detail of his bed as he’s fighting me for his beauty sleep. You don’t need to know the entire play-by-play. The analogies already fulfill the first two criteria so you can fill in the blanks without much effort.

One of the most important things about writing is to gauge how hard it is to convey the idea. The more familiar the idea, the less effort is needed. Don’t insult your reader. Write with variation and a pace that brings them along as if they’re with you. Keep it simple enough that it’s easy to digest.

My morning routine is straightforward:

• I get up.

• I take care of my room.

• I head over to my kid’s room to take care of him.

Without all the analogies around them, this is core of process. Again, it’s a rather bland and boring presentation that I chose to dress up with comparisons to bugs under a rock, a towel gun activity, and WWE.

What results is an elegant and direct analogy that is concrete and clear in the mind’s eye and taps into various memories and moments for the reader, transporting them to the scene.

Your turn

Familiarity. Accuracy. Brevity.

Vivid analogies possess all three of these characteristics. How well they land with your audience is up to how well you know your message as well as your knowledge of shared experiences.

Come up with a few analogies that have these qualities and try them out, either in conversation or in writing. As with everything, thinking expansively and connectively takes practice and regular effort.

What good is having intelligence and wit if you spend all your time staring at the ingredients in that beautiful, picture-perfect image of the kitchen of your mind? Get in there and make something. Start serving up some dishes for your hungry audience.

Something amazing happens as you start doing this more often…I’ll share that next issue.