Probably the biggest mistake that most of us make is that we try to find analogies.
We sit down at a desk and wrack our brains trying to find an analogy that's just right. Instead, we end up with analogies that have been used repeatedly by other people. Or analogy doesn't seem fresh—and certainly not memorable.
Yet, there are dozens if not hundreds of analogies waiting for us round the corner. And by that I mean literally round the corner. It's a secret waiting for us in plain sight. Let's find out how to go about creating those analogies by the dozen!
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Have you ever noticed that “crazy car” in traffic?
You know what I'm talking about. Like everyone else, you're stuck in traffic, but there's this one crazy guy. He moves from the left lane to the middle lane. Then, not much further down the road, he moves to the fast lane.
Suddenly, he's back, moving into the middle lane again. Back and forth, he tries to beat the traffic by moving from one lane to the other but not getting very far ahead.
What was new about the analogy that you just read?
Probably not a lot. Even if you've not experienced an identical situation, you would not have had any problem with the above example. However, you might have noticed how that paragraph's description ended. You felt that the crazy driver was “not getting ahead.”
In other words, his random actions were largely pointless. Here's my question: If you were to sit down and think of a ” pointless ” situation, would you think of a crazy guy in traffic? My guess is you wouldn't.
And yet we didn't sit down to do anything. We just went about our day and noticed what was unfolding around us.
In the first stage of creating analogies, we came up with one idea or concept. Then, we would need to do nothing but watch the world around us. If you were like me, headed towards the city, you would've seen the crazy driver. Like magic, the “one idea or concept” would have connected with the driver.
The most interesting part about the situation is that it is entirely mundane. Almost a hundred per cent of that analogy is something we can relate to as a pretty everyday event.
It's the boring and mundane that makes fascinating analogies.
The problem is that we look for the analogy when writing or creating something. And when we do so, we also create very repetitive situations. We have an analogy that's almost exactly like everybody else's.
For instance, let's take the concept of “distraction.”
What would you think of when asked to think of distraction?
Most people might immediately move to something like a shiny object, a magpie, or a cat with a laser pointer. We tend to resort to the very same examples over and over again. At one point, one of these examples might have been very interesting to the reader, but they have been used so many times that they are ready for the recycle bin.
We don't need fancy analogies to make a point.
All we need are everyday situations that have the capacity to take the reader by surprise. The way I create analogies is to think of what I want to say and then do no writing at all. My next step is to observe the world around me.
Let's take an example.
I recently stopped having coffee for a while. The problem is that I find most teas extremely tedious. When the waitress suggested I have “hibiscus tea”, I did so because I had few choices. However, as I drank the tea, I found it to bedelightful. It was sharp and tangy from the first sip to the very last drop.
I had a bright idea. If the “tea” was like most teas I have been drinking, I could easily get a second or even a third round. To my absolute amazement, when I added hot water, the “hibiscus tea” was tasteless. It had gone from 100% strength to zero.
Notice how that description is exceptionally mundane?
Yet, it very cleverly describes the concept of going from full strength to a level of limpness. If I were writing an article that involved “100% to zero”, the hibiscus tea episode is not only a great match but utterly fresh as an analogy.
Let's slide into yet another example, shall we?
I have three avocados sitting on my kitchen benchtop. All of them are green. This situation drives me crazy. All the avocados will turn black and ready to eat, or they will all stay persistently green. There is no way to speed up the process; for the most part, I just have to be patient.
Notice once again how you would not connect avocados with patience. If you sat down to write something, you would consider almost everything under the sun, but not avocados.
And that is because we are trying to “write an analogy”. Instead, we should go through life with an idea and then watch something unfold. After that, it is just a matter of connecting that crazy driver/hibiscus tea/ripening of overly green avocados to your article.
Let's take a final example.
Is turmeric powder good for you?
Curcumin is the main active compound in turmeric, responsible for its vibrant yellow colour and many of its health benefits. It is a powerful antioxidant with anti-inflammatory properties, believed to contribute to various medicinal effects.
But you can drink turmeric powder all day long and get zero benefits. That's because curcumin has low bioavailability, as the body doesn't absorb it easily. To increase absorption, it's often combined with piperine (found in black pepper) or taken with fat, as it's fat-soluble.
See that turmeric example above? What does it remind you of?
Let's say I have been thinking about writing an article about strategic alliances. Well, isn't pepper is a “strategic alliance” for curcumin? Curcumin has other “strategic alliances” such as ghee, olive/coconut oil, avocado or even full-fat dairy.
It's unlikely that you would be thinking about turmeric in combination with strategic alliances. Yet, if you have your idea and have worked backwards, it's just a matter of paying attention to what's happening around you.
The very mundane situations in life provide exceedingly good analogies.
You can surprise people around you by bringing up these completely disconnected analogies with the subject matter. Meanwhile, everybody else is bringing up the same old tired “shiny object” analogies.
However, we can now take this to a whole new level.
Do we need to take it to another level? No, we don't, but we have the opportunity to do so if we want to.
Let's find out how as we move to stage three – The Power Of Analogies (Part 3) – How To Transform Analogies From Tired To Fresh
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