People feel good when they figure analogies out
When readers encounter a metaphor, scholars believe, they:
- Process the literal meaning
- Analyze whether the literal meaning makes sense
- See the glitch in that meaning
- Seek the metaphorical meaning when the literal meaning doesn’t make sense
Some of the power of metaphor comes from readers’ pleasure or relief at figuring out the metaphorical meaning, researchers believe.
Make Magic with Metaphor
Charm readers with analogies and comparisons
It’s tempting to call metaphor the magic spell in a writer’s repertoire, the Penn and Teller of the page.
Metaphor has the power to persuade far better than literal language. It lets you say in five words what would otherwise take five paragraphs to explain.
It makes readers’ brains light up, helps them think more broadly about your message — even (ahem!) makes you look more attractive.
At Master the Art of Storytelling — our two-day hands-on creative-writing master class on Feb.19-20, 2019, in San Diego — you’ll want to master a few tricks before you step onto the stage. In this session, you’ll learn how to charm readers with the magic of metaphor:
- Get the zombies out of your message: Don’t let Dead and Dead2 metaphors eat your readers’ brains.
- Craft a compelling metaphor with our fill-in-the-blanks formula.
- Polish your metaphor: Learn which kinds of metaphors to choose, which to avoid and where in your message to place them from 41 academic studies covering 50 years of research.
Learn more about our
San Diego master class.
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Source: Pradeep Sopory and James P. Dillard, “The Persuasive Effects of Metaphor: A Meta-Analysis,” Human Communication Research, July 2002
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