Learning to Fly

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

Learning the secret of flight from a bird was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician.

The Wright Brothers, David McCullough, page 53

Background

The Wright Brothers is a story of innovation, adversity, and the irreversible advancement of society. We all know Orville and Wilbur invented the airplane, but very few of us know the odds they defied in the process.

This particular sentence was from a letter Orville wrote to his sister while he and Wilbur were on the dunes of the North Carolina coast, perfecting their craft.

What makes it wonderful?

This writing is wonderful because it captures the complexity of an entire book in a single sentence.

It was the early 1900s. The Wright brothers hauled their flying machine 700 miles by train and boat from Dayton, Ohio to the Outer Banks of North Carolina because that’s where the winds were best suited for testing a flying machine.

And how did they learn the winds were best in the Outer Banks? They wrote a letter to the United States Weather Bureau in Washington, waited for a reply, then pored over the data they received from over 100 weather stations across the country.

A question that could be answered in a single Google search today took weeks of waiting and hours of effort to answer.

All this to say, the Wright brothers were fighting an unwinnable battle at every turn. And Orville articulated that in one simple sentence.

Learning the secret of flight from a bird was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician.

You see, another thing they spent hundreds of hours doing was watching birds. They literally learned to fly by watching the only creature capable of doing it. Can you imagine how hard that was?

How do you learn the secret of flying from watching a bird?

It can’t talk. It’s not giving you instructions. He’s just following his instincts. If they wanted to learn the secret of flight from the birds, Orville and Wilbur needed bionic eyes and Einstein brains.

Just like if they wanted to learn the secrets of magic from a magician.

I’ve never met a magician willing to reveal his secrets. And I’ve never met a spectator who could spot a magician’s tricks. Like a bird soaring through the sky, the magician pulls a rabbit from a hat or your card from the deck. We don’t know how it happens, we only know that it does.

And that’s what makes the sentence great. It tells us exactly how hard the Wright brothers had it—a task that should take thousands of words, summed in a single sentence.

Let's get technical

Orville’s excellent sentence was an analogy—a comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of clarification.

He could’ve told his sister they were watching birds to learn how to fly, and it was really hard. Instead he compared it to learning magic from a magician. He told her exactly how hard it was to learn the secret of flight from a bird.

She didn’t have to wonder. Is it hard like getting out of bed in the morning? Is it hard like long division?

Nope. It’s hard like learning the secret of magic from a magician—nearly impossible.

Think of an analogy like a little story you tell your readers. Use comparisons to bring clarity and color to your writing. And leave your readers knowing exactly how hard it is to learn the secret of flight from a bird.

Happy writing,

Joe