Make messages vivid with metaphor
Analogy makes your benefits more tantalizing by making them more tangible. So use metaphor and simile to make your concepts concrete.… Read the full article
Creative communications
‘The wind made the reeds gossip’
Kindle your creativity
All these years later, I’m still grateful for the Kindle app on my iPad.
I thought the thing I’d love most about reading on my devices would be the extra mini-fridge-sized space it leaves in my luggage for necessities like thick Marimekko sweaters and airport-sized Fazer chocolate bars that I collect on my trips.… Read the full article
Use metaphor, not modifiers
‘This isn’t dessert, it’s a diabetic coma on a plate’
“The thing about food writing is that there are only about fifteen adjectives you can use — ‘delicious,’ ‘delectable,’ ‘unctuous’ …”
— Tom Parker Bowles, the food writer at Tatler, the British society magazine and author of The Year of Eating Dangerously
The problem with modifiers — delicious, delectable, unctuous — is that they don’t paint pictures in your readers’ minds.… Read the full article
Go beyond description
Engage your readers’ senses with metaphor
In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor described a character as “a young woman in slacks…
“… whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage.”
… Read the full articleBring power to your points
Analogy sharpens your message
When Gerald Ford assumed the presidency in the wake of Watergate, he wanted Americans to know they were getting a simple, plain-spoken leader.… Read the full article
Analogy makes him great
Rob Kapilow makes Mozart meaningful through metaphor
I don’t know an adagio from an allegro. (Although I have been told that my andante needs to accelerando if I want to keep up with my husband in the airport.)… Read the full article
Metaphor makes the difference
Need your audience to ‘get’ your point? Use analogy
“The rewards of learning how to handle metaphor go beyond a style that is merely a bit more mannered than usual.
… Read the full articlePaint concrete word pictures
Name names; number numbers
When it comes to interest and understanding, Countertop Gadgets are better than Domestic Devices.
Favorite Junk outperforms Preferred Items. How a Plane Flies beats The Laws of Lift.… Read the full article
Begin in the middle for good story structure
Start your story in medias res
You remember learning about in medias res (classical Latin for “into the middle things”) in college. That’s where you open your story the midst of the action.… Read the full article
Paint word pictures
‘You’ll have your hand on your head with a knot under it’
My grandma and namesake, Annie B. Vrana, was an Oklahoma farm woman and one of the most colorful people I’ve known.… Read the full article