Using figurative language – e.g. stories, analogies, metaphors – and painting a picture in people’s minds can literally save a thousand words. Certain complicated communications, whether it be a business situation, a technical explanation, or a recommended solution, are often hard to express and even harder to understand with just layers and layers of words and sentences and paragraphs.
If you have a complicated communication, spend a couple of minutes in your preparation time thinking of a story with parallel relationships to your situation, or an analogy that is commonly understood, or a metaphor that presents a more tangible image of what you’re trying to explain or propose. If you can do that, you will save yourself and your audience the trouble of sifting through a lot of words they won’t remember nearly as well as they will the picture you draw for them verbally.
Figurative language has impact … literally!

Beth Levine

Beth Levine

Communications Coach at SmartMouth Communications
SmartMouth Founder and Principal Beth Noymer Levine is a Communications Coach who is emerging as one of the country’s leading voices on how to prepare and deliver speeches and presentations that actually work for both the audience and the speaker.
Beth Levine