An analogy is when a writer compares two unrelated things that have similar qualities. Gilbert compares a crooked house to writing her novel The Signature of All Things, which had an underdeveloped character and caused her to consider revising the book. This character was like a house with a crooked foundation that could be fixed but would require destroying the entire house to do so. Both the character and the house have defects. Similarly, she would need to destroy her novel to improve the underdeveloped character, and she wasn’t sure it was worth redoing the entire book. In the end, she accepted the crooked nature of her novel because of its other strengths. This exemplifies how analogies make ideas more accessible and create an image, connecting an abstract idea like an underdeveloped character to a concrete idea like a crooked house.

An anecdote is a brief story that details an event or situation that relates to and supports a specific idea. Like other self-help books, Big Magic uses anecdotes to support its main ideas and create a conversational tone, and to help people better learn concepts. Gilbert uses them to illustrate creative people’s struggles with inspiration, creativity, persistence, courage, success and failure, feeling like they have permission to create, trusting in the world, curiosity, and other concepts.