From ancient cave paintings, to the works of Shakespeare.
From 80's video games, to celebrity interviews on Ellen.
Stories are at the heart of our culture.
We use them to make sense of the world.
They're our go-to framework for structuring the delivery of information.
So as this is a YouTube course, all about engaging the public with scientific information,
we need to talk story.
The idea of telling a science story though, is something that leads to a mixed bag of reactions.
Most of the scientists, entrepreneurs or science centre and museum staff,
that I run public engagement training with, embrace story and jump at the challenge of writing one.
But some say things like, "No, I can't tell a story" or "Stories are works of fiction right?"
They can be worried that stories are childish, that they oversimplify or manipulate.
I totally get where they're coming from
and if you share these concerns, I'll be touching on them in this video.
And yes, stories can of course be works of fiction, but we're all about factual stories here.
Sorry if you clicked on this wanting to be the next Arthur C. Clarke or Ursula K. Le Guin.
In the previous video, you Identified an opening hook.
Something that would capture your audience's attention.
This video is all about keeping it.
One thing you could do when eyes start to glaze over or look down at their phone,
is to recapture them with another hook, and
another and another, to essentially replace the hook with a net, that catches that attention for a long time.
That's not the most satisfying or memorable experience though,
which is why we're turning to story.
"But Greg!", I hear you cry.
"There's often just a single major finding I want to talk about that could give me a start and perhaps an end.
But what about the rest of it? How do I turn my science into a story?"
Well, here are five top tips to help.
*Follow the tried-and-tested structure*
From short and sharp anecdotes, to sweeping epics,
a story always boils down to the same thing.
It's a sequence of events, in which characters you care about, face obstacles or conflict,
which they somehow overcome, often with the help of other characters, as they try to reach their goals.
To write your own science story,
you just need to follow this age-old structure.
To help, I recommend getting your mitts on my free course resource for this video,
which will help you sketch your story out
just follow the link to grab it.
Let's start with a simple version of this story and because I wrote this course with a focus on practicing scientists,
but with the aim for it to be helpful to anyone interested in science communication.
We're gonna look first, at what story a scientist could tell about their research.
So, character that's you or your team.
Goal is what you want to figure out.
Let's say it's how life develops in the primordial soup.
conflict one, could be funding or an unknown.
Say, needing to work out what gas mix to put in your simulation early atmosphere.
A second conflict may come along later.
Maybe an experiment that went wrong or you couldn't get hold of a bit of kit, like a
spark generator, to create that right model of lightning strike.
Conflict three, strange results, maybe.
Then, you need to think about how did you overcome those conflicts?
Resolution 1. You fought for a grant or a fortuitous conversation at a conference,
helped you find the details of the gas mix and how to synthesize it.
Resolution 2. You blagged or bartered access.
Resolution 3. Maybe this one took a while but you realized that the mass spec peak
was actually from an unknown contaminant.
Exploring what the components of your story might be,
can help you spot what they should be.
which steps were actually important?
Where did your project really take a significant step back or leap forwards?
Those are the key points in your story, that offer great periods of conflict or moments of resolution.
*Weave in an emotional thread*
Scientists are often portrayed as white coated, objective automatons, working in a lab,
unemotionally uncovering the fundamental laws of the universe.
Which as we know, is wrong in so many ways but mainly because you are a real person,
dealing with all the normal strife of life and research is hard.
So it's definitely emotional but this is exactly what will lift your story.
As we discussed in the previous video,
Emotions are contagious, so share yours.
Talk about the exhausting late nights, fixing broken kit, the boredom of pipetting
5342 vials, the nervous excitement before you crunch that data, the elation or the confusion when you saw that
plot for the first time.
Admit that scientists don't always know what they're setting out to find, that part of the
excitement is being an explorer, happily lost in the woods, seeing what treasure you may come across.
Add these elements of emotional story, alongside your science story
and you'll take your audience on the roller coaster with you.
The course resource for this video has a column for you to add this by the way.
*Get creative with character*
Time to level up.
Rather than the central hero or protagonist of the story being you or your team,
could it be the virus that you're working on or the Bitcoin you're looking at mining more sustainably?
Or if you research the Northern Lights, how about a photon of light from the Sun?
Let's play that last one out.
So it's created during nuclear fusion deep in the Sun's core.
Then it's got to battle through densely packed protons,
which can take thousands to millions of years.
On, through the convective zone.
It needs to make it past the dust and electrons threatening to scatter it.
Into the solar atmosphere, then eight minutes later after traveling 150 million kilometres, it reaches earth,
Where it hits the magneto sphere.
The photon is funneled down towards the North Pole, where it bumps into an atom in the Earth's atmosphere.
Excites it and produces one tiny part of the beautiful dancing colors of the Aurora.
Let me know your thoughts, on this more creative type of story, in the comments.
It's more interesting for sure and you can still thread plenty of science into it, but I'd love to hear your views.
*Give your audience a map*
Have you ever been watching a brilliant speaker or
listening to a great podcast and you suddenly realize that although you're hooked and you've been paying
attention, you have no idea where in the story you are or where it's going.
Of course, not knowing what's coming up next could be a deliberate move by the storyteller, to create
suspense or mystery.
But personally, especially with a science story, I like to know where I am right now, where I've been and where I'm going.
I don't need to know the details of the finale, just to have a sense of the journey that I'm on.
This is signposting and whether your story is told chronologically or not,
It's helpful to geotag where you are.
Near the start, give us a glimpse of the journey that we're gonna go on.
Occasionally, remind us where we are and how we got here and how far
we still have to go and make sure that when we arrive, we know we've arrived.
*No one talks about how Elvis entered the building*
The beginning and end of your story are the most important.
Nail those and you nail the talk, the blog, the interview.
To do that, craft a careful deliberate finale to your story
Do you end on an unexpected finding, that you didn't see coming?
Everyone loves a good plot twist.
Or, perhaps an ending ties together all of your disparate threads in one fell swoop.
That can be difficult.
But it's incredibly satisfying to the reader or the viewer or plenty of science is open-ended, so you could go
Inception style. Leave the audiences wondering what happens next.
There are countless ways to write a story about your science,
so have a play, come up with a few different ones and then try them out on friends and family.
See what they find the most interesting and engaging.
The rest of this course is going to look at 'how' you tell this story.
We're going to get onto specific tips for giving a talk, a media interview
or making a video about your science soon.
First though, we need to chat about the words you use to tell your story.
If your audience can't follow those you'll quickly lose them
no matter how good the story is.
As always, if you've got any thoughts or questions, do drop them in the comments below
and subscribe to hear about future videos.
I'll see you next time.
