An analogy is a kind of comparison that explains the unknown in terms of the known, the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar.

A good analogy can help your readers understand a complicated subject or view a common experience in a new way. Analogies can be used with other methods of development to explain a process, define a concept, narrate an event, or describe a person or place.

Analogy isn't a single form of writing.

Rather, it's a tool for thinking about a subject, as these brief examples demonstrate:

• "Do you ever feel that getting up in the morning is like pulling yourself out of quicksand? . . ."
  (Jean Betschart, In Control, 2001)
• "Sailing a ship through a storm is . . . a good analogy for the conditions inside an organization during turbulent times, since not only will there be the external turbulence to deal with, but internal turbulence as well . . .."
  (Peter Lorange, Leading in Turbulent Times, 2010)
• "For some people, reading a good book is like a Calgon bubble bath--it takes you away. . . ."
  (Kris Carr, Crazy Sexy Cancer Survivor, 2008)
• "Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves. . . ."
  (Lewis Thomas, "On Societies as Organisms," 1971)
• "To me, patching up a heart that'd had an attack was like changing out bald tires. They were worn and tired, just like an attack made the heart, but you couldn't just switch out one heart for another. . . ."
  (C. E. Murphy, Coyote Dreams, 2007)

• "Falling in love is like waking up with a cold--or more fittingly, like waking up with a fever. . . ."
  (William B. Irvine, On Desire, 2006)

British author Dorothy Sayers observed that analogous thinking is a key aspect of the writing process. A composition professor explains:

Analogy illustrates easily and to almost everyone how an "event" can become an "experience" through the adoption of what Miss [Dorothy] Sayers called an "as if" attitude. That is, by arbitrarily looking at an event in several different ways, "as if" if it were this sort of thing, a student can actually experience transformation from the inside. . . . The analogy functions both as a focus and a catalyst for "conversion" of event into experience. It also provides, in some instances not merely the heuristic for discovery but the actual pattern for the entire essay that follows.
(D. Gordon Rohman, "Pre-Writing: The Stage of Discovery in the Writing Process." College Composition and Communication, May 1965)

To discover original analogies that can be explored in paragraphs and essays, apply the "as if" attitude to any one of the 30 topics listed below. In each case, ask yourself, "What is it like?"

Thirty Topic Suggestions: Analogy

1. Moving to a new neighborhood
2. Starting a new job
3. Working at a fast-food restaurant
4. Quitting a job
5. Watching an exciting movie
6. Reading a good book
7. Going into debt
8. Getting out of debt
9. Losing a close friend
10. Leaving home for the first time
     
11. Taking a difficult exam
12. Making a speech
13. Learning a new skill
14. Gaining a new friend
15. Responding to bad news
16. Responding to good news
17. Attending a new place of worship
18. Dealing with success
19. Dealing with failure
20. Being in a car accident
     
21. Falling in love
22. Getting married
23. Falling out of love
24. Experiencing grief
25. Experiencing joy
26. Becoming addicted to drugs
27. Watching a friend destroy himself (or herself)
28. Getting up in the morning
29. Resisting peer pressure
30. Discovering a major in college

Classic Essays Developed With Analogies

• Analogies in David Simon's "Homicide"
• "The Battle of the Ants," by Henry David Thoreau
• Benchley's "Advice to Writers"
• "The Haunted Mind," by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• "I Have a Dream," by Martin Luther King, Jr.
• "A Liberal Education," by Thomas Henry Huxley
• "A Law of Acceleration," by Henry Adams