Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc. 520 Journalism: Publishing Across Media Writers’ Workshop Chapter Sixteen Chapter Sixteen In this Writers’ Workshop you will: • Use SEE format to build on a simile. • Communicate abstract ideas with metaphoric verbs. WORKSHOP 16.1 W ORKSHOP 16.1 Using Comparisons for Clarity Using Comparisons for Clarity Similes, metaphors and allusions allow our audience to understand something new by comparing it to something familiar. A simile uses the word like or as to make the comparison. His anger was like a boiling kettle. A metaphor implies a comparison by using language normally applied to something else. His anger boiled over. An allusion is an indirect reference to some body of knowledge, such as literature or history, which is understood by the audience. My former boss was an Ebenezer Scrooge clone. (The writer assumes the reader is familiar with the miserly character in Charles Dickens’ story “A Christmas Carol.”) Mini-Lesson: Do You SEE It? Mini-Lesson: Do You SEE It? You usually hear about similes, metaphors and allusions as you study poetry, but journalists also use these tools to communicate complex or abstract ideas in a small space. Journalists, however, use these tools in the service of clarity, with an eye to their audience’s previous experience, while poets may use them to create depth of meaning, beauty or new insight. A poet might say, as Scottish poet Robert Burns did, “O my Luve’s like a red, red rose ...” and leave us to ponder whether the girl he loves is like a red, red rose, or the love he has for the girl is like a red, red rose. And how is it like a red, red rose? A journalist, on the other hand, uses something familiar to make clear something that is new, strange or abstract. How does Deepak Singh of Public Radio International describe the end-of-winter festival of Holi in northern India to an American radio audience? He does it in similes, drawing on what the audience knows to communicate something unfamiliar. He writes that 10-year-old boys are dyed blue and purple from head to toe, with bandanas on their heads, and water guns in their hands ... like a mob of hooligans out to make mischief. Some cities celebrate for a week. It’s almost like one gigantic frat party or a pregame tailgate party in America. The city of Lucknow celebrates in a more controlled way. There’s an unspoken rule that the color playing begins around 8 a.m. and comes to a full stop around noon, as if someone fl icked a switch. Often journalists follow an SEE pattern when describing something unknown. They present a simile—or sometimes a metaphor—then explain it, then give examples of it. Reeves Wiedeman does this repeatedly in his Popular Mechanics article “How the New York Times Works: This is how the Gray Lady gets made in 2015.” SAY the comparison Ernie Booth, the operations manager, glides through the [plant] like a small- town mayor, EXPLAIN the comparison (How is Booth like a small- town mayor?) jabbing the noisy air with quick chin nods, offering ritual greetings to some of the 350 employees who work here each night. EVIDENCE or EXAMPLES “What’s happening, Tom?” “Hey, Andy.” “All quiet, Dennis?” Booth himself describes the production plant’s control room with a comparison, and Weideman builds on it. SAY the comparison Booth ... scans the control room, a glass-walled offi ce he compares to an indoor air traffi c control tower, EXPLAIN the comparison (How is the control room like a traffic control tower?) overlooking the fl oor. EVIDENCE or EXAMPLES “You see all these fl ashing things?” he says, pointing to one of several screens displaying different parts of the plant. “Flashing things are bad. Flashing things mean we have a problem.”