- Welcome to Science Through Story.
This is a storytelling workshop
for Leakey Foundation grantees.
It's part of our new program
to provide career development support
to our grant recipients.
I'm Meredith Johnson,
I'm the communications director
for the Leakey Foundation
and I'm the writer, host and producer
of Our Origins Stories podcast.
I'm joined here today
by our executive director Cheryl Cammisa.
And our grants officers, Patti Moore,
and H. Gregory are
participating virtually.
This is our very first online workshop.
And we're really happy that you're here
and hopefully no more
technical difficulties.
I'm gonna switch just to
slides for a little bit.
So before we get started,
I had wanted to make sure
that everyone can hear
us, can everybody hear me?
You can type in the chat
window if you can't, Okay,
sounds like you can.
Our webinar today will
be about an hour long,
followed by some q&a,
and I wanna begin by
telling you a little bit
about why you are here
today, why we've invited you.
Why does a science funding organization
care about storytelling?
Here at the Leakey Foundation,
we strongly believe that
your research project
isn't done until you've
told people about it.
And storytelling is the
best way to get people
to connect with you and your work.
Our foundation was actually
built on the power of stories.
Without Louis Leakey's
ability to tell stories
our organization wouldn't exist today.
Louis knew that storytelling
was a powerful way to inspire
and educate people about the work
that he and Mary Leakey were doing.
And he was famous for his
ability to tell stories
that enthralled audiences
like the one you're seeing on the screen,
and he got people really
excited about human origins,
evolution and primate and human behavior.
So excited that in 1968,
a group of ordinary people got together
and formed The Leakey Foundation
with a dual mission to fund human origins,
research and share discoveries.
And we want you our
Leakey Foundation grantees
and future grantees, to have all the tools
you need to tell stories
about your science
in compelling educational
and entertaining ways.
The storytelling techniques
that we'll be talking
about today will help you
present your work in any situation.
You can even use these
storytelling techniques
in professional and academic settings
like giving presentations
or writing papers.
The more comfortable you are with it,
the more tools you have
to share your research, the better.
Also, you and your
stories are the best way
to inspire people to donate
to the Leakey Foundation,
so we can raise more money
and fund more research
and more programs like
our Baldwin Fellowship,
and our educational outreach.
So today we're gonna
learn how stories work.
We'll learn about narrative structure,
character, voice, plot,
all the tools you need
to write and tell stories
about your research no
matter where you are,
and I'm excited to get started.
So I would like to
introduce Sarah ElShafie.
Great, okay, here's me, here's Sarah.
Sarah is a Doctoral Candidate
in the Department of Integrative Biology
at the University of California, Berkeley.
Her research, based at
the Museum of Paleontology
at Berkeley investigates
climate change impacts
on animal communities over time.
She also works at the intersection
of science and entertainment
to make science accessible and exciting.
She leads storytelling workshops
all across the country,
for scientists and science educators,
largely inspired by
storytelling strategies
used in the film industry,
including "Pixar".
She worked closely with
people from "Pixar",
to develop this workshop
and we're thrilled
to have her here today.
So now I'm gonna hand the
microphone over to Sarah.
- Thank you so much, Meredith,
for that lovely introduction.
Can everyone hear me okay?
If you're having having any
trouble hearing me at any point,
please just chime in in the chat.
And we'll make sure that we fix it.
I'm really, really
excited to be here today.
I was actually just thinking
during Meredith's introduction
that many years ago, when I was in college
and I was just starting to get interested
in science outreach and
science storytelling.
I actually had the real
pleasure of meeting a member
of the Leakey family,
I met Mary Leakey at a TEDx conference,
and I saw her give a talk and
I was very inspired by it.
So being here at the
Leakey Foundation today,
to run a workshop on science storytelling
with all of you is kind
of coming full circle.
So it's really a pleasure to be here.
All right, so let's dive right in.
And to why use storytelling,
Meredith talked a little
bit about why storytelling
is important for sharing
science with public audiences,
non-specialist audiences.
But let's talk about why we use stories
to communicate science.
How do we know that this even works
and this is actually a
powerful communication tool?
Well, believe it or not,
there's actually a scientific basis
to how storytelling affects the brain.
We can get the next
slide, please, perfect.
So a few years ago,
this was a study done
with some participants who were wearing,
they were hooked up to
fMRI, which are machines
that allowed the researchers
to monitor their brain activity.
So in this study, participant number one
told a story to participant number two,
and that first line of brain scans
that you see in the slide,
the areas of orange are the areas
of those two people's brains
that were overlapping in activity.
So whether the person
was telling the story
or hearing the story,
the same areas of their
brain were lighting up.
Then in the second round,
they brought in the third participant
also hooked up to an fMRI.
And participant number
two who heard the story
the first time retold that story
to participant number three,
and guess what, again,
the same areas of their
brains were lighting up
that second line of brain scans you see
are the areas between
the three participants
that were overlapping.
So whether you were telling the story,
hearing the story, retelling the story
or hearing the story retold,
the same areas of the
brain were lighting up,
which is really, really cool.
They were essentially synching brainwaves
with each other so to speak,
get the next slide.
So in a follow up study,
or in another study,
they took a bunch of participants
again hooked up to fMRIs,
and they broke them into four groups
and showed each group a
different type of footage.
Group number one was watching
some Alfred Hitchcock,
"Bang! You're Dead" high
suspense, strong narrative.
Group number two was watching
"A Spaghetti Western",
"The Good, the Bad and
the Ugly," Sergio Leoni.
Group number three was watching
some light comedy "Curb Your Enthusiasm"
with Larry David.
Group number four was watching
footage of people in a park.
Now it may come as no surprise
that the people watching Alfred Hitchcock
had the highest degree of
inter subject correlation.
In other words, they had the most overlap
in their brain activity
with the most frequency.
So most of the time when they
were watching this footage,
everybody was thinking the same thing.
"Is he gonna grab the gun?
"What's gonna happen next?"
Because there was a strong narrative
and there was a lot of suspense.
So they were all queued
into the same thing.
The people watching the
"Spaghetti Western" about 50/50.
And this is the figure in
the bottom left hand corner.
People watching the good, The
bad and the ugly about 50/50.
There's a strong narrative,
but it's a slower pace.
So they were all thinking the same thing
about half the time,
people watching the
light comedy about 20%,
they queued in at the punch lines.
But other than that some minds wandering.
People watching footage
of pigeons in a park,
absolutely nothing, no overlap at all.
So what does this tell us?
If you're using a strong narrative,
all of your audience members
are gonna be thinking the
same thing at the same time,
you're syncing your brain with theirs,
their brains with yours.
If you don't use narrative at all,
their minds are gonna be
going all over the place
and they're not gonna be paying attention
to what you're saying,
or remember it later on.
So there is actually a
scientific basis to demonstrate
that storytelling does affect the brain.
So with that in mind,
let's start our foray into storytelling
by first thinking about
building connections,
starting with connecting
with your science.
Now, before the workshop,
we gave you a worksheet
to start going over.
And if you had a chance,
maybe you started working through page one
these questions about
connecting with your science.
Now, whether you've had
a chance to think about
this already or not, it doesn't matter.
And also, I'll just say right now,
there are many pages to this worksheet,
you will not get through
this whole worksheet
during the course of this webinar,
don't worry about that.
This is just for you to follow along
during our discussion today.
And then we encourage
you to spend some time
on these questions after the webinar.
So let's think about
connecting with your science.
On the next slide.
So thinking about storytelling,
it's kind of like a form of story therapy.
Actually, many people in the film industry
when there's first brainstorming ideas
for stories for films, sort of go through
a similar process,
thinking about questions
like the questions
on your worksheet here.
What are some types of
stories that you enjoy?
And these can be any types of stories,
they can be from films,
from books, from TV shows,
family anecdotes, folktales,
whatever it is that interests you.
What are some types of stories
that no matter how many times
you've encountered them,
you still enjoy them,
and you keep coming back to them
and you really, really just are fulfilled
from them every time?
What are the types of stories you enjoy?
Do they have similar
characters, similar genres?
Do they take place in similar settings?
Do they have similar themes?
So really think about that.
And does that maybe reflect something
about yourself, your personality,
your likes or dislikes?
And also think about what kinds of topics
have always fascinated you?
And I put a few pictures
here for my childhood
and my journey into science.
When I was a little kid, I loved animals
and that picture on the top
is me swimming with a dolphin
when I was a little kid.
I was just enchanted by dolphins
and that led to a love of nature
and an interest in all kinds of things.
At first it was just marine biology,
and then I got really
interested in paleontology
and I was also a huge movie nerd.
So there's me at a fossil dig in college
wearing a Jurassic Park T shirt,
because that was always
one of my favorite movies.
So definitely, film and storytelling
and my interest in science
have always kind of gone hand in hand,
which is, I suppose why I
ended up running workshops
inspired by film
storytelling for scientists.
And then now in my PhD work,
I've started studying not
only old fossil things,
but also living things.
So I'm a herpetologist now,
I study amphibians, and reptiles
and I study fossil reptiles as well
and as a way of studying
how climate change
or climate impacts life over time.
So thinking about the topics
that have always fascinated
me has really helped me
sort of bring my interest in science
back to an emotional
level, in thinking about
how am I going to
connect with other people
who are not scientists
when I'm trying to tell
them about my work?
Rather than starting with the facts,
and that's what today is all about.
So what topics have always fascinated you?
And especially what were
some of the transformative
experiences in your life
that led you to want to be a scientist,
that led you to want to
study your particular field?
So for example,
I put that picture of
me with a dolphin up top
because when I was six, my
grandfather who was a fisherman,
he took me out in a fishing
boat on Christmas Day,
and a whole pot of dolphins
swam around the boat,
surrounded us, and were
jumping out in the air,
and I was just totally enthralled with it.
And that was like, that's
the earliest memory I have
of being really in love with nature.
So that was definitely
a transformative experience in my life.
And I encourage you to
even think all the way back
to your formative childhood experiences
or at any other point in your life
when you're thinking about the inspiration
for telling your stories
about your scientific work.
And I realized that, this may
seem a little counterintuitive
or feel a little weird at first.
Because of course, when
we're trained to do science,
we're trained to think
about it very objectively
and remove as much bias as possible,
and not make ourselves
the center of the story.
It has to be the facts, the information,
the data at the center of the story.
That is absolutely true
when you're conducting the science,
and when you are reporting the science
in formal scientific
professional journals.
But when we're talking about science,
with non scientists,
with the general public,
or even just in conversation
with each other,
it's really important to come back
to this emotionally
resonant aspect of our work
and think about what compels us
to do this work as human beings?
What got you interested in
this in the first place?
What led you on this path?
What set you on this journey?
Because that's what people
are really gonna connect with.
And again, if you aren't using a story,
if you're not using that
emotional resonance,
then people aren't gonna retain anything
from what you're saying.
And it's absolutely possible to do that
without compromising the
scientific evidence at all,
without dumbing down or without
compromising the science.
So that's what this webinar is all about.
So thinking about what stories
are of interest to you,
what topics fascinate you,
experiences in your life
and also, of course,
how you specifically got interested
in this particular project.
If we can advance it one more, perfect.
So what sparked your curiosity
in this particular topic
that you are trying to
develop a story about today?
Maybe the particular topic
for which you got a grant
from the Leakey Foundation.
So thinking about all of these things,
is a great place to start.
What compels you to want to do this work
and more importantly,
to want to tell this story
for our purposes today?
So thinking about
connecting with our science,
it's also really important to think
about connecting with your audience.
And this is, I would say
the most important aspect
of communication in general is
thinking about your audience.
Communication is actually
mostly about listening,
even more so than you saying
whatever you wanna say.
And that is absolutely true
whether you are talking
to somebody in person,
whether you are giving a talk
to a whole roomful of people,
whether you're running
a webinar for 100 people
who can hear me, but I
can't see or hear you,
but I'm still thinking about
where you're coming from,
who you are and what your needs are.
So connecting with your audience
is very, very important.
So let's get the next slide.
And so now we're looking at
page two of your worksheet.
And again, we don't
expect you to work through
all of these questions
in detail as we're going
but you can just follow along
and then really spend some more time
on these questions later.
So the most important question
with thinking about your audiences,
is of course, who is your audience?
Who is it that you are trying
to reach with the story?
And also important, what is the context?
Are you speaking with somebody in person?
Are you giving a talk?
Are you preparing a blog
post that will be read online
without you there in person?
Are you giving a webinar
to a bunch of people live
and who will also be
able to watch it later?
What is the context of your
interaction with this audience?
Now, it's also really
important to think about,
what are some things your
audience will probably care about?
And the more specific you can
narrow that down, the better.
So if I'm talking to a
general public audience,
I can think pretty broadly.
And even if it is a
general public audience,
just for the sake of
an exercise right now,
what are some things that
you can probably safely
assume most people care about,
no matter who they are or
where they're coming from?
What are some things
you care about Meredith?
- [Meredith] I care about my family.
- Family, great.
What are some things you care about?
- [Cheryl] The future of the planet.
- The future of the planet, wonderful.
What are some things I care about?
I care about my safety, the
safety of my friends and family,
my loved ones,
what are some things that
affect all of those factors?
The economy, politics, policies,
health and environment.
So you can go ahead and advance, yep.
No matter who you're talking to.
When in doubt, these are some things
that are always safe to fall back on.
Pretty good bet that no matter
who you're speaking with,
you can probably safely assume
that everybody cares about the economy,
safety and health policy
and politics, our future,
whether it's the future of the planet
or the future of loved ones specifically,
most people care about the
continuation of human beings.
Proximity.
If you can tie what you're saying
bring it a little bit closer
to the particular experience
of whoever it is you're addressing.
So today, whenever possible,
I'm going to tie what we're talking about
to things that Leakey Foundation grantees
might especially be able to relate to,
like doing field work or
writing scientific papers.
If I'm speaking anywhere
here in California,
if I can relate it to California,
or here in the Bay area
where we're coming to you
from San Francisco today,
if I can tie it to the particular
experience of my audience
that's gonna help them remember
it just a little bit more.
And of course, wow!
Everybody appreciates a cool wow factor,
always helps to get people's attention.
Now, in addition to thinking about
who's your audience?
In what context, are
you encountering them?
And what do they care about?
It's also really, really important
to think about your goal.
Now, what do I mean by a goal?
If you are telling any story to somebody
and you're trying to reach
a particular audience,
you probably have a
particular goal in mind
or odds are a lot of goals in mind.
Like if you're trying to tell your family
about the research that you're doing
funded by Leakey Foundation,
what might some of your goals be?
Maybe you want them to think
that your work is really cool,
and that it's really important
and that it's gonna contribute
something really valuable to society,
and that you've made good career choices
and that you're going
to be really successful
and, and, and, and, and, and
probably have a lot of goals in mind.
And without fail whenever I find myself
kind of getting stuck
on how to tell a story
or how to sift it down,
and I'm getting lost in the weeds,
when I stop and make
myself think about it,
I always realize
it's because I am trying
to do too much at once.
I'm trying to accomplish
too many goals at once.
So I actually write
down all of those goals,
even the most ridiculous ones.
And I force myself to pick just one
of those goals to focus on.
So maybe when I go to my
family reunion this summer,
if I wanna tell them about the research
I've been doing for my PhD,
I will write all of those goals down,
right down to, I just want
them to think I'm cool
and that I'm making good
use of my time in life.
And I will pick one of those goals like,
I want them to appreciate
why studying fossils are important.
Maybe that's gonna be
my number one goal for that interaction.
And I will prioritize my whole story
around that one goal,
I will craft my story
with that number one goal in mind,
and you'd be amazed how
many of those other goals
you can actually subsume
under that primary goal.
If I can convince them
that studying fossils
is important for any reason,
they will probably also end up thinking
that my work is interesting
and that I'm cool
and that I'm spending my time well.
So pick one goal to focus on.
That goal might be informing somebody,
it might be convincing them
to donate to your research
or to The Leakey Foundation,
it might be getting them to
take action on something,
it might be getting them to look
at a particular issue in a new way,
whatever it is, one goal.
And it can also be helpful to think
about what might be some
obstacles to those goals?
What might get in the way
of reaching that goal?
If you want people to
take action on something,
what might be some of
the things in the way
of getting them motivated
to take that action?
So just think about
those obstacles if maybe,
because of the particular life experience
that my audience is coming from,
or maybe they have too
many other distractions
in the way of getting
them to actually focus
on what I'm trying to share with them.
Think about all of that.
You won't be able to solve or overcome
all of those obstacles necessarily,
but just taking them into consideration
and being aware of them as
you're crafting your story
can be really, really helpful
in thinking about, okay, well,
if they might be coming from
this particular experience,
or they might have this
particular prejudice,
or this particular
preconception about this topic,
like working with live animals,
or they may not even be
aware of what fossils are,
or maybe they just don't
think about geologic time
on a regular basis.
Take that into consideration,
and maybe work some of that
into how you set up your story
or the details that you
include in your story.
And that can be really helpful as well.
So we thought about
connecting with our science
on a personal level ourselves,
connecting with our audience.
And now let's get into what actually goes
into story development.
Oh, and before I do that,
yes, thank you, one more
point I wanted to make
with thinking about your audience,
it can be really helpful
to think about a reference audience.
And what I mean by that is,
if you have a particular audience
that you're trying to reach, say,
policymakers or potential donors,
potential donors, even potential donors
is still kind of a large audience,
general audience to think about.
So if you can think of
one specific person,
it could be a real person that you know
or a made up hypothetical
person, in your mind
that you would want,
really want to get the story across to,
that can be really helpful.
If I am trying to convince
whatever donors I might be speaking to,
to give money to The Leakey Foundation,
maybe I'll think of one
person in particular,
like somebody who likes
to give money to causes
but is just not familiar
with studying human evolution
or is not familiar with fossil work.
How would I get across to
that one specific person?
Say Brenda, the chair
of whichever company,
if you can think of one specific person
that can really help to.
And Meredith, we were talking
earlier you were talking,
saying that there are many audiences
that we would hope to
reach with these blog posts
from Leakey Foundation grantees.
But there are kind of
three specific audiences
that were especially trying
to reach in most cases,
what were those audiences?
- [Meredith] That's right.
So one is people like you, grantees,
grantees of the Leakey Foundation
and future grantees, people
who might wanna apply.
The other one is just people
who are nerds for human evolution,
who love to read everything
they can about it
and will be fascinated with
the work that you're doing.
And then the third one are those donors
that she mentioned.
And, those go into
different specific categories.
We have major donors who
just love the science
who already know the foundation
and just wanna hear about you.
They care about you,
they care about the work
that they've already funded.
And then we have the
people that might not know
about you yet, but we want
them to care about you
as a person and the work that you're doing
so that they might be inspired
to give any amount, even $1.
So, yeah.
- Awesome.
So thinking about those
three major audiences
that you might be trying to reach.
Enthusiasts, potential donors
and potential future grantees.
I think, for the sake
of our exercises today.
Let's start by thinking
about potential donors.
Because if you think about
reaching potential donors
with your story, you'll probably be able
to also capture those other
audiences with any story
that you might craft with
potential donors in mind.
Any story that you craft
for a potential donor,
you're going to assume that
they are interested in science,
or they're at least generally
interested in science,
and they're curious about what you do,
but they probably don't know
about a lot of the specifics.
So including those specifics,
certainly won't alienate the enthusiasts
who may or may not know a little bit more
about the particulars of your field.
But speaking for myself,
I've been studying
science for over a decade.
And I still appreciate the
refresher of the details.
So I don't think you need to worry
about alienating those people.
And same goes for potential grantees.
Potential grantees want to
see that what you're doing
is really interesting and really exciting.
And even potential grantees
applying for a grant
from the Leakey Foundation
are gonna be coming
from lots of different
backgrounds and experiences.
So I think using potential
donors as a reference audience
or a particular target audience,
for our purposes today,
is a great place to start.
Okay, so now let's get
into the nitty gritty
of what actually goes
into structuring a story.
Terrific.
So let's advance.
All right.
As we're thinking about story structure,
I'd like to start with one
of my favorite quotes ever,
"A good story cannot be devised,
it has to be distilled."
That's a quote from Raymond Chandler,
who is a famous gumshoe
detective novelist.
A good story cannot be devised,
it has to be distilled.
This is not about injecting
story into science
or devising a story out of
science where there is none.
There's always a story
in any scientific topic
in any scientific study,
really, really awesome stories.
So our challenge is simply
to take all of that material
that we have to work with,
all of the different details and aspects
that you could include in your story.
And to distill whatever
version of that story
is going to be the most cogent,
the most cohesive, the
most compelling story
that you could tell for
your particular audience
that you're trying to reach,
with your particular
goal or goals in mind.
So let's explore story structure now
by distilling it bit by bit.
So let's start with
kind of the big picture
of what story looks like.
you may have heard of the dramatic arc.
Dramatic arc is a term widely used
when talking about story
structure, narrative structure.
The term was coined by a German theorist
named Gustav Freytag
who studied stories
from all over the place,
especially like Aristotle and Shakespeare.
And he noted that many stories
have this kind of dramatic arc of rising
and falling tension over time.
So the story might start
with some exposition at the beginning,
the introduction, if you will,
setting the scene
introducing the characters
explaining how this world
works and what's going on.
And then there'll be an inciting incident
that catalyzes the story into motion,
usually some event that
changes the situation
for the main character or characters.
Often either by presenting
a new opportunity
or a new threat to that
character's objective.
And we'll talk more
about that in a moment.
And then the action rises over time
with the tension building over time
coming to a head at the
climax where all is revealed,
either for better or worse,
and then there's some falling action
as we find the outcomes
of that climactic event,
and then some kind of resolution
or lack of resolution at the end.
So if we're telling a story
about a scientific study, for example,
the next slide,
our dramatic arc might perhaps
look something like this.
And note that many
stories aren't gonna have
just one arc up and down,
it's gonna be a whole
series of arcs rising
more and more tension over time.
So maybe our exposition at
the beginning of our story
about a scientific study would
be our topic of interest.
What got us interested in this question?
An existing problem that
we're trying to address
maybe a lack of information
in a particular area, for example,
the background research that we did.
And perhaps our inciting incident
is that new question that
we want to investigate,
and maybe our rising tension,
at first is going to be trying to find
the right study group
or the right study area
or the right field site
to conduct the work.
Oh, but then we ran into a complication.
Oh, no, we couldn't get the permits
our Jeep got stuck in a river.
Whatever happened, and then we
needed to adjust our methods
or adjust our plan, then the
tension is gonna rise again.
And finally something worked.
We got some results,
maybe that's the climax,
and then the falling action
is gonna be figuring out
what are the implications
of these results that we got,
of this study that we did?
What have we learned from all of this?
And then arriving at some broad message
or new knowledge at the end.
And all of these figures, by the way,
are from that paper
that we shared with you
in advance of this webinar,
making science meaningful
for broad audiences through stories.
So that's dramatic arc.
Another commonly referred to story format
is commonly known as the hero's journey.
Now, this is based on work
from an anthropologist
named Joseph Campbell,
who in the mid 20th century,
studied stories from all over the world
going back centuries,
and he found that many of these stories
had common elements to them.
And he always illustrated this
as kind of a circle, a circular journey.
We start in a familiar
world, or familiar situation,
that is something that is
familiar to the main character,
who can be anybody male or female,
human, non human doesn't matter.
A familiar world or familiar situation,
and then that main character
receives a call to adventure,
something that is beckoning them
to enter a new situation or a new world.
And they might even
refuse that call at first,
but then something
compels them to answer it
and go on this journey.
And they enter this new
world or new situation
where they encounter
new trials and obstacles
and they have to overcome them or not.
And they are transformed in the process.
And at the end of the story,
they end up returning
to that familiar world
where they started, or
maybe just to a situation
that is more familiar to them
where they feel like "Okay, I
am back on solid ground now."
But they have changed in the process,
they have been transformed.
They have new knowledge about
the world and of themselves.
And this format was famously popularized
when George Lucas used the
formula very explicitly
to write the script for
the first Star Wars film,
"A New Hope."
Luke Skywalker starts in a
familiar situation to him
and familiar world, Tatooine,
which is familiar to him, not to us,
It's a different planet.
But even there are aspects of that plan
that are familiar to us.
And then he receives a call to adventure
the archer ditus message.
"Help me Obi Wan Kenobi,
you're my only hope."
A message from Princess Leia.
And then he enters this new world
of entering the fight
against the rebellion
and goes into the Death Star and trials
and transformations and
all this stuff happens.
And if you haven't seen
the first Star Wars film
"A New Hope", I highly recommend it
because it's a great movie.
And also, it's a wonderful demonstration
of these basic storytelling
elements and structures
that we're talking about here today.
Let's get the next slide.
So if we wanna distill
that hero's Journey
structure even further,
you can summarize it
with these simple lines,
once upon a time, blank,
every day, blank,
but then one day, there's
your inciting incident.
And because of that, something
happened, because of that,
because of that, until
finally ever since then.
So, for example,
once upon a time there was a scientist
who wanted to study anthropology,
every day they read books and articles,
and they wish that they
could go into the field
and do really cool field work.
But one day, they saw an announcement
that the Leakey Foundation
was accepting applications for grants.
Because of that they applied for a grant.
Because of that, they got a grant.
Because of that, they went into the field
and did all this amazing
work until finally
they got some results
and they published them.
And ever since then,
they've been a scientist
who goes around the world
sharing their work with public audiences.
There we go. (laughs)
It's a very, very straightforward
and this distillation of story structure
was created by Ken Adams
who is an improv instructor.
And it's just a really, really quick,
easy way that you can use to think
about structuring your story.
If we wanna distill this even further,
I highly recommend these
books by my good friend
and mentor Randy Olson,
Randy Olson is actually a scientist.
He was a tenured professor.
And he decided to leave tenure
and go to film school
to become a filmmaker,
because he really wanted to focus
on telling effective science stories.
And now he works full time
running training workshops,
helping other scientists become
better storytellers as well.
And so he's written three great books,
I highly recommend them all,
especially the most recent one,
"Houston, we Have a Narrative"
That's kind of the summary
of his whole careers work
investigating this stuff.
And Randy's whole platform is talking
about the simplest storytelling
format I've encountered.
And, but, therefore,
it is an even further
distillation of that dramatic arc,
the hero's journey, the
story spine into simply,
we know this, and we know this,
but we don't know this,
therefore, we did this.
Or we had this character
in this situation,
and everyday this thing happened
but then this difference thing happened
that changed the situation
therefore the character did this.
It is so simple, but it's so effective.
And if you pay attention,
every good scientific
abstract, every speech,
every elevator pitch, every movie tagline,
all of them actually have this
and, but, therefore
structure embedded in there.
So I really encourage you
to check out that book,
if you wanna learn more about this stuff,
and it's very, very helpful resource.
Okay, now with all of this
in mind, next slide, please.
One last thing I'd like
you to think about,
distilling even a little bit further.
If you're struggling to think
about where do I even begin?
And this is now actually
coming to the first question
on page three of your worksheet.
If you're struggling to think about
where should I even start my story?
I could start it, but when I was a kid,
I could start it when I was in school,
I could start it the moment
I got into the field.
I could start at the moment of discovery.
I could start it here, now, today
looking back on my experience,
where do I even begin?
It can be helpful to think about,
if your story that you wanna tell
was a news story in a newspaper,
or in your news app on your phone.
If you were to see that story pop up,
what would the headline of your story be?
What is the single most important event
of the entire story that you want to tell?
Is it scientist discovers new fossil?
Scientist discovers new thing
about human cognition
or chimpanzee cognition?
What is the number one most
important aspect of your story?
What's the headline?
And start from there,
that might be where you begin your story.
It might be the climax of your story,
but even just identifying
what is the number one
most important thing
I want my story to center around,
that can help you think about, okay.
With that headline in mind, and again,
my audience and my goals
for the audience in mind.
Where can the story begin?
So before we dive into what
that might actually look like, next slide,
I do want to note that the
formats that I just described,
these are not the only
way to tell stories.
There are many, many
storytelling traditions
from cultures all over the world.
And not all of them
follow this exact format,
not all stories are linear.
Not all stories follow only one character.
Not all stories have to lead to a climax.
And then come down from that,
not all stories are about discovery.
There are many, many,
many ways to tell stories
and there are many wonderful
storytelling traditions
that we have available to us
and that we can learn from
from all over the world.
I have focused on these particular ones,
because we only have so much time today
and also because they are
a helpful starting point.
They are a helpful
starting point for learning
to share stories about any
topic including science,
with the broadest audience as possible,
simply because they are very
widely recognized stories.
I guarantee you that if you
look at any popular film,
or TV show or book that has come out
of at least the American
film industry in Hollywood,
the vast majority of them follow
this format to some degree,
many of them have a hero's journey,
many of them have a dramatic arc involved.
So this is not the only
way to tell stories,
but it is a very widely
recognized way to tell stories.
So when you're just getting started,
I encourage you to use
this as a starting point
and as a frame of reference,
because if you tell a story
that at all follows any of this,
and this is not to say you have
to shoehorn your your
science into this mold,
that you must follow
this formula explicitly,
you don't have to.
But if you use any of
that, if you choose to,
you'll already be telling a story
that people are going to be
familiar with structurally
and that will really
help them follow along.
And then as you go with
it, you can play with it.
You can break those rules a little bit
but you have to learn the rules first,
to be able to break them, so to speak.
So it's a great point to get started.
So with all of that in mind,
let's actually brainstorm a story
and see what this might look like.
- [Meredith] Oops, so we could.
- Yes, and actually, I'll
go to the next slide first.
Before we do that.
So we did share this
paper with you in advance
of the webinar, "Making Science Meaningful
"for Broad Audiences Through Stories."
This is a paper that I
wrote as part of a symposium
that I ran actually here
in San Francisco a couple years ago,
on science through narrative,
and we had scientists and artists
speaking on the same platform.
So this paper is kind of a
distillation of a lot of things
that I've learned from running workshops,
and that I put into my workshops.
And much of what we just discussed,
is discussed in this paper.
Another thing that the paper goes through
and that we're going to think about now
as we're brainstorming,
is these essential elements
of science stories.
So we talked about dramatic arc.
We talked about hero's journey.
If you read it any other
material about storytelling,
you'll find lots of
different approaches to it,
all of which can be very helpful.
In my experience as a scientist,
when I'm telling stories about science,
and especially about scientific research,
I find it really helpful to
focus on these essential points.
Who is your main character?
What is that main character's objective?
What are they trying to accomplish?
What obstacle or obstacles are
in the way of that objective?
What is at stake if they
don't overcome that objective?
What is the inciting incident
that catalyzes the story into motion?
What actions does the main character take
to try to overcome those obstacles?
And what are the outcomes
of those actions?
So let's start by brainstorming
a story now together.
And this is really to show you
that you don't have to
be super experienced
to be able to do this.
In fact, you shouldn't
overthink it at all,
you should just dive in
and start playing with it
and see what you come up with.
So to demonstrate that
we're gonna brainstorm
a story now together,
which I'm very excited about.
- [Meredith] I'm just gonna switch
to
you can carry on, while I get the scope.
- So for this next part,
we have another special person joining us.
Do you like to introduce yourself?
- [Cheryl] Cheryl Cammisa,
Executive director.
- Thanks so much Cheryl.
- Okay, so
we still have the camera
and screen sharing.
So I'm just gonna make that Google Doc
full size while you get started.
- Great,
so, let's start with a topic.
What are we trying to tell a story
about today as an example,
and who is our audience
that we have in mind?
- I think the audience we have in mind
would be the board members
of the Leakey Foundation
who funded this research.
- Okay, great, so potential
donors or existing donors,
specifically the board members
of the Leakey Foundation, perfect.
And what are we telling
them a story about today?
- Our research at Gombe
National Park in Tanzania.
- Beautiful, so as an example,
we'll start with start
brainstorming a story
about research in Gombe
National Park in Tanzania,
for board members and what is our goal
for these board members?
What do we want them
to get out of our story
or come away with from our story?
- That funding our research had value
and it's important to
advancing scientific knowledge.
- Great, okay.
So we want them to see
that funding the research
was really important for
advancing scientific knowledge
and had scientific value.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- Important.
Can we narrow that goal even further?
We want them to see that it had
scientific value in general,
do we want to demonstrate
that we contributed
to a specific field of science
in an important way?
- [Meredith] Why not?
Sure.
- To primatology.
- Great okay, so we wanna
show that this research
we did in Gombe National Reserve
made really significant contributions
to knowledge of primatology,
and of science in general.
- [Meredith] Okay, great.
- Terrific.
Okay, so starting with our essentials,
who is our main character?
- A 26 year old Secretary from England?
- Aha, okay.
Very specific main character.
(laughing)
Terrific.
Let's start with a story
that we might be familiar with already.
So we have a 26 year old
Secretary from England.
- Mm hmm.
- And what does this person who may
or may not be named Jane
Goodall want to accomplish?
- She wants to live with wild animals
and she wants to know
everything about chimpanzees.
- Okay, she wants to go
learn about chimpanzees
and even go so far as to live
with the wild animals to do so.
Great.
What obstacles might be in
the way of her doing that?
- She doesn't have a
proper educational training
and she's young.
- She is young, she's a woman.
She doesn't have any proper
educational training.
Nobody their proper
civilized mind at this time
is going to encourage this
woman to do this crazy thing.
Lots of obstacles that
she's working against.
A lot of preconceptions and stereotypes
that she's working against.
Okay, what is at stake
if she can't overcome these obstacles?
What are the potential consequences
if she can't figure this out?
Or figure out how to get
around these obstacles?
- The funding will stop.
Maybe other researchers
won't be given a chance.
- The funding for what will stop?
- Researching chimpanzees in the wild.
- So she already has funding
to research chimpanzees?
- [Meredith] Not at first,
- Not at first.
- She has to get it.
- Okay, so first she had,
that's actually an obstacle
that she has to overcome,
she has to get funding from somebody.
What is at stake, even before that,
when she's just starting on this journey?
- [Meredith] For her
personally or for the world?
- Both.
- For her personally,
she won't be able to achieve her dreams.
And for the world, people
won't know about chimpanzees.
- Why would that be bad?
Why do people need to
know about chimpanzees
putting ourselves back in this time?
- Because they can help
us learn about people
is one reason, and because
they're really cool.
And nobody's done it yet.
- They are really cool.
No one's done it yet,
they can help us learn about ourselves.
So if this woman doesn't
overcome these obstacles
and figure out how to do this
work and make this happen
and get the funding to do so.
We might not understand
a lot of fundamental aspects of ourselves.
- [Meredith] Yeah.
- Interesting.
Okay, so there's a lot at stake here.
Very dramatic story.
So for stakes, we could simply write,
summarize that as learning
about human origins,
or human nature,
however you'd like to phrase it.
Okay, so let's try this out.
We've got ourselves set
up here with a topic,
a character, obstacles, stakes,
what is the main event?
Now, quick note,
you do not have to go through
these questions in order.
In fact, it can be very helpful
to not go through these
questions in order,
you can jump around and play with them.
And I guarantee that as you go through
iterations of your story,
you're going to change aspects around
to realize that one thing might be fitting
one thing might not be fitting.
So, let's jump back for a moment
and think about what is the main event
that we wanna make sure
that we include in our story
that our story is centered around?
Given that we are
speaking to board members
of the Leakey Foundation,
we want to convince
them that we are making
significant contributions to primatology
and science in general.
And our main character is this person.
What is the main event
that we wanna make sure
we include in the story,
- [Meredith] I think we wanna include
when she first observes tool use.
- Great.
- Yeah.
- Perfect when she first
observes tool use, okay.
So, we're gonna have our story.
Let's make that the climax of the story.
Let's try it that way.
Okay, so, coming back to our setup here,
actually let's work backwards from that,
let's try it that way.
What actions that Jane Goodall took?
What actions led to that discovery
of observing tool use in chimpanzees?
- [Meredith] Hmm, okay,
there were a lot of them.
How many of you want me to say?
- Name a few really important ones.
- [Meredith] Okay, she
got herself to Africa.
- She got to Africa.
- Met Louis Leakey.
- She met Louis Leakey.
- [Meredith] He got money
for her to go, and she went,
- He funded her field
expeditions and she went,
and she spent time with the chimpanzees.
And then she made this
amazing observation.
- [Meredith] Yeah.
- Great, okay, what was
the inciting incident?
What was the incident that
set all of that in motion?
- [Meredith] She says
it was meeting Louis.
- Okay, so maybe meeting Louis Leakey
was the inciting incident,
inciting incident is
often meeting a person
or something new happening.
So meeting Louis Leakey and telling him
what she wanted to do, and then he said,
"You know what, that's a great idea.
"I'm gonna fund your work."
Cool, okay, so maybe that's
the inciting incident,
and then actions, challenges
that she faced along the
way were many of course,
we're gonna skip ahead of
it for the sake of time.
So she overcame all these challenges,
she did her field work.
And then she ended up making
this amazing observation
of tool use in chimpanzees.
And of course, what were the
outcomes of that journey?
Many, many.
- Yeah.
- Incredible discovery,
generated interest all over the world.
And now we have this field of primatology.
- [Meredith] And yeah,
now all kinds of things.
so many more people studying chimps,
- So many more people studying chimps.
- [Meredith] And other primates
and so many more women in primatology.
- Terrific, that is an amazing story.
Does that story serve
our purpose of convincing
the board members of the Leakey Foundation
that we are making important
contributions to primatology?
- [Meredith] I hope so.
- Why does that support our goal
of convincing board members?
We're talking about a person
who did this work a long time ago.
- [Meredith] Oh, yeah.
So if we wanna bring
it to the current day,
we could talk about the legacy of that.
And how since then, new scientists,
like students and PhD candidates
have been able to come
and follow on Jane's
footsteps, all because of.
- Great, perfect.
We sort of outlined almost one
of the foundational stories
of this field that we're
supporting research in,
and a story that continues to inspire
the work of the Leakey
Foundation, wonderful.
So that's a story that might be
like the beginning of a conversation
or the beginning of a presentation.
Now let's bring it full circle
to what is the lasting
legacy of that story
and the work of the Leakys?
What is the Leakey Foundation doing today?
So tell me a little bit
about the work that,
you were both recently in Africa abroad.
What were some of the things
that you were working on there
or some of the research that
you were observing there?
- [Meredith] Oh gosh, yeah,
Cheryl do you wanna answer that?
- [Cheryl] We visited the
Simien Mountains in Ethiopia,
met with five Leakey research grantees,
that are all studying
this species of monkeys.
They're making incredible discoveries.
And yeah.
- Terrific.
Let's say one of those researchers.
Let's say one of those researchers
is the main character
of a study, terrific.
And yeah, we're getting
some great suggestions in
from participants, I love this.
Let's say one of those researchers
is our main character in a story.
And if you wanted to tell a
story to the board members
about one of these amazing researchers
that you met on this trip.
What was the main goal of that researcher?
What are they trying to figure out?
Or what are they trying
to do with their work?
- [Cheryl] Trying to
understand communication.
- Communication between
what or between whom?
- [Cheryl] In gelada society.
- In gelada society.
- Yes.
- Okay, so they're trying
to understand communication
in this particular place,
that's their objective,
and what obstacles might be
in the way of that objective?
What have they had to overcome?
- Weather.
- Weather.
- Permits.
- Permits.
- The local culture
isn't totally comfortable
with this research being done,
they don't understand it.
No one has really done
the research before,
so it's a fairly new research project
within the last 15 years or so.
- That sounds fascinating.
- Yeah.
- Terrific, so,
there's a lot of potential
obstacles in the way,
challenging field conditions,
challenges with even just communicating
with the study subjects
trying to get them to understand
what they're trying to do.
And be comfortable with it
and not give them the
wrong impression, awesome.
And what is at stake with
this research project?
What would the consequences be
if they're not successful
in doing this research?
- [Cheryl] Actually,
the Ethiopian government
may not give them permits
anymore to do the research.
- Hmm, interesting.
So we have lots of things at stake,
including the continuation
of being able to work
in that area, or with
those people, interesting.
And then of course, also, I'm sure, like,
being able to discover something new
and learn something really
critical about this culture
or never having the chance
to learn that, wonderful.
To say nothing of just the success
of this one field project.
Great, so a lot at stake, excellent.
Okay, so, let's jump ahead
again to the headline,
and maybe this research has
already reached some results
perhaps it's ongoing and
doesn't have an outcome yet,
or doesn't have results yet.
What stage is this work in?
- [Meredith] Oh, geez.
- I mean it's ongoing.
- It's ongoing.
- Ongoing.
- Yeah.
- [Meredith] And all the
different researchers
might have results of projects
and a lot of other people
have funding (mumbles)
- Great, okay.
Well, this is a perfect
example to work with,
because many of may be wondering
what do I do if my research is ongoing?
What if I don't have my results yet?
What if I don't even have
my field permits yet?
What if I don't have an
outcome to my story yet?
How can I tell a story about it?
Of course, you can tell a story about it.
There's always a story to tell.
And often the unresolved stories
or the To be continued stories
are the most compelling stories,
especially if you're trying
to reach potential donors
those are great stories to tell.
So if we have this project, it is ongoing.
We don't have results yet
but we have everything that we really need
to get people hooked into it.
We have the problem
you're trying to address
what's at stake,
what obstacles are in the way
all the challenges involved.
Okay, so what might the headline
so to speak of this story be?
It could be as simple as
researcher endeavors to study
a society living in this
particular part of the world.
Or researcher forms new relationship,
with what was the name
of the society again?
- [Meredith] They're monkeys.
- Oh they're monkeys.
- Gelada monkeys.
- Gelada monkeys.
- Gelada monkeys, oh I
didn't realize Gelada
is a type of monkey, oh, fascinating.
So they are a researcher endeavors
to communicate with gelada monkeys
or to study gelada monkeys
for the first time.
You said this is a new area
of research hasn't been done before.
Perfect.
Yeah, so that could be the headline.
And maybe the actions
leading up to that headline
might be they attempt to make contact
with these monkeys for the first time,
they attempt to communicate.
Or maybe the and before
that there was trying
to get permission from
the Ethiopian government
to even do that in the first place.
And what could be the inciting incident
kind of moving or working
backwards from there?
Maybe the inciting incident
was finding out about these
monkeys in the first place.
How do they find out about these monkeys?
Maybe they heard from a
colleague that they exist,
and that they haven't been studied yet.
Or maybe they observed
them themselves in the wild
when they were there
for a different reason.
So the inciting incident
could be whatever got them
interested in this program
or interested in this project.
Awesome.
And so if that's the headline,
like making their first
attempt to even do this work,
that's a great headline.
And then the falling
action from that could be,
trying to raise the
money to do the research
or trying to put a research plan together
to be able to carry out the fieldwork
and find the field site.
So whether it's a story
that has already taken place
that we might already
be really familiar with,
like the story of Jane Goodall
and how her career got started,
or whether it's the story of your work
that might even still be in progress
and isn't even completed yet,
you can totally tell a story about it
using these same essential elements.
Terrific.
- [Meredith] Okay, back to slides?
- Bact to slides.
And so, and I'll just mention
so if you're looking at the questions
that you have in this worksheet
that you can work through later.
Either way, question nine, it says,
either way, what have you
learned from your journey?
This is bringing it back
to the emotional pole of your journey.
Why is this going to
resonate with other people?
Well, why does it resonate
with you as a human being?
What have you learned from this journey?
And I'm talking beyond the
specific scientific knowledge
that you may have gained from the project.
What have you learned about
people, about hominids
about our closest relatives
monkeys and chimpanzees and apes?
What have you learned
about what unites us all
what we have in common
what makes us different?
What have you learned about
working with other people?
What have you learned about
the world and how it works?
You can be as philosophical
about this as you want,
or as literal about this as you want.
What have you gained as a
person out of this experience?
Do you feel that you've
changed in some way
from the experience?
Have you created change in some way?
And finally, that last page, page six,
it asks you if you like
to describe a particular
scene or experience
from your field work,
or from your lab work or from any part
of this journey that you've been on.
Describe it to us, use vivid language,
take us there with you,
what did you encounter?
What did you smell, hear, feel?
If you can use really vivid imagery
or even just describing
the scene in a vivid way
that, engages all the senses,
even if you're not literally
engaging the senses,
even just describing that
is a really great way
to pull people into yourself story
and take them on that experience with you.
Maybe you wanna start
your story in the field,
I'm in the jungle,
I'm observing these amazing monkeys.
And I'm making sounds I
never thought I could make
but I'm trying to communicate
and it seems like they actually heard me.
And then you back up
and tell the audience,
how did you get to this point?
How did you get to this incredible moment?
What led you there?
And now what's the outcome of it,
you can tell the story
lots of different ways.
So hopefully, that gives you an example
of how quick and easy and fun this is.
And I say easy.
I mean, it's easy, and it's difficult,
storytelling is easy to get started with.
In just one hour we've covered a lot
of the essentials with you
and now you have all
the tools that you need
to get started actually,
crafting and building your own
stories about your science.
And of course, to really do it well.
You don't have to be super experienced.
Of course you can make a whole
career out of storytelling.
Many of my colleagues in Film
and other artistic
disciplines have made careers
out of telling stories.
But you don't have to be super
experienced to get started.
And the more you practice at it,
the better you will get at it.
And you will go through many
iterations of any given story,
we just kind of quickly,
quickly brainstormed a story
about something that is just unfolding,
about a story that we
were all familiar with.
But if we really wanted to polish that up
to present, to tell the story to the board
of the Leakey Foundation,
we would go through a
lot of iterations of it.
So keep trying versions of it.
Try it on different test audiences,
especially audiences that
are outside of your field.
So try it on your friends,
try it on your family members.
And just keep iterating
and have fun with it.
That's the most important thing.
And don't focus too much on
getting it right the first time
because there's no one
right way to tell a story.
There's lots of ways to tell any story.
It's just about finding
the version of that story
that is going to feel right to you,
and be compelling and cohesive,
while also including the science
that you really want to include,
but also getting at
that emotional residence
that is gonna get people really invested.
So with that, I'd love to turn it over
to question and answer,
and we are at 11 o'clock,
our local time for an hour.
So we will be recording the question
and answer session.
And if you need to go
now, you can tune in,
watch the recorded q&a session later.
But for those of you who
can stick around for a bit,
we'd love to take any questions you have.
And I'll turn it over to Meredith.
- [Meredith] Okay.
I'm just gonna navigate
over to the q&a tab.
- Terrific.
- And then we can get started.
(laughing)
Sorry, everyone, two screens.
That's for me.
Okay, no questions yet.
So do you have some questions
that people frequently ask you?
- Yes, oh my gosh,
I have so many frequently asked questions.
Yeah.
So to get started thinking about this
a little bit more broadly,
one question that we get really frequently
actually, that we've already
answered kind of addressed
in the last portion.
A lot of times people ask,
How can I tell a story about a
project that is not finished?
And we actually just talked
about that quite a bit.
Yeah, projects that are not finished yet
or that are still in the process,
those are great stories
to tell because they're,
the unresolved stories are
often the most compelling
because they're not finished yet.
So everybody wants to
know what happens next.
And that's a great tool that you can use
to get people hooked in
and keep people hooked
into what it is that you're doing.
Another frequently asked
question that we get,
especially with scientists
doing field work in
different parts of the world,
is how can we avoid colonialist narratives
when discussing fieldwork and research?
And this is, I think, a
really important question.
And it's it's not an easy one to address.
But I know it's something that even many
of my colleagues in
paleontology studying fossils
of other animals, really
feel strongly about.
And many of my colleagues
who do zoology field work
in different parts of the world,
especially parts like
Africa and South America.
And I'm sure many researchers who
are doing paleoanthropology research.
And I think it is a
really important question.
So before sharing my thoughts,
I'm curious to know
what you two think about
does this come up a lot?
And what are some of your thoughts on
how we can maybe address this issue?
- [Meredith] Yeah, I mean, for me,
it's a very important issue.
And in the past in anthropology,
it has been a problem.
So we're hoping that
our grantees can learn,
how to tell narratives
that are not only just
like, not colonialist,
but maybe anti-colonialists.
So yeah, that's my feeling about it.
- Yeah, I think
even just being aware of
that is really important.
And I think it's really important
that when you're going to
a place to do field work,
and especially when you're talking
about doing that field work
in a different part of the world,
acknowledging that,
you're not swooping in
with all the answers,
or you're not arriving
to kind of save people
from ignorance or,
bringing resources that they don't have,
or, it's like, that's not
what the work is about.
And always acknowledging
how very important it is
to work with people who live
in that part of the world
that you're working,
and how essential they are to the success
of the project, and to the
knowledge that you gain
and emphasizing whether
you're collaborating
with colleagues in that part of the world
or even just the people who are
helping you out in the field
how very essential that is.
And also, I think,
emphasizing that, and another
aspect that comes up a lot is
this question about taking, like specimens
out of a particular part of the world
back to a different part of the world,
maybe even housing them in
a museum there temporarily,
or especially using specimens
that were maybe taken out
of a part of the world in the past
and are now housed as part
of the research collection
at a different Museum in a
different part of the world
It's a sensitive issue.
It's a political issue.
It's a cultural issue.
And it's important to acknowledge that,
and I think often the
best thing that you can do
is just to acknowledge it openly.
And even acknowledge that, yes,
these specimens that we're using,
they did come from this part of the world
and maybe they were taken with permission,
they might have been
taken without permission.
But today, thanks to
international collaborations
and technology, it's really important
to work to make that work,
that material and the information
you're getting out of it
available to everybody.
- [Meredith] So I have a few questions
from people who are on the webinar.
- Terrific.
- [Meredith] First one from Stephanie,
"What do you ask your friends or family
"as you're testing your story,
"that you're testing your story
"and find out what their feedback is?"
- Great question.
So if you're trying out a
story on a test audience,
say friends or family, what do
you ask them to get feedback?
So I would encourage you to just say,
I wanna pitch my story to you.
And if you like, you can tell
them who your target audiences
that you have in mind.
Like you could say, I wanna tell a story
to potential donors.
So keep in mind that you
are now my potential donor
who is curious about what I'm doing
and trying to decide if
whether I should donate
to my research or to the
Leakey Foundation in general.
And then pitch your story to them.
And one really helpful thing
to ask them at the end is,
what are you getting out of this story?
For you personally, what is
this story meaning to you?
Is there some like
broader universal message
that you're getting out of this story
that goes beyond the
specifics of the story
that I just told you?
So maybe if I were trying to do that work
on these monkeys in Ethiopia,
and then studying their communication,
and I wanted to try that
story out on a friend,
I might ask them,
What were you getting out of this story,
kind of an emotional level?
What does this story mean to you?
Beyond, apparently, monkeys
can communicate with each
other and that's really cool.
At a broader level that
goes beyond the specifics.
If that person says something like,
to me, seemed like a story about
trying something thing
that might not work,
but you care about it
so you try it anyway.
Or maybe we're all more connected
than we might realize,
we have more in common with
each other than we might realize
both people and animals
closely related to people,
that's kind of a more universal message.
And if they're getting something
like that out of your story,
and that's sort of the direction
that you want your story to go,
or somewhere in the vicinity
of where you want your story to land,
then something's working well.
If there isn't a clear universal message
emerging from your story, that
goes beyond those specifics,
then maybe think about
going back over your draft
and trying to emphasize
that universality more,
or even thinking about
what are the universal
aspects of my story?
That anybody anywhere
could really connect with
no matter what experience
they're coming from
or what background knowledge
they may already have.
- [Meredith] Okay, I
have another question.
- Great.
- [Meredith] "Can we use inanimate objects
"like an oxygen molecule as a
character in a science story?
"And what are the special
challenges of that?"
- Fantastic question.
Thank you so much for that question.
Can we use an inanimate
or non-human object
as a main character in a story?
Yes, of course you can,
you absolutely can.
You can use anything as a
main character in a story.
Something like an oxygen molecule
could totally be the main
character in a story.
If an oxygen molecule
was our main character,
maybe the objective of that option
of that oxygen molecule, excuse me,
might be to bond with
a molecule of carbon,
or to bond with another molecule of oxygen
or to go from a gaseous
state to a liquid state
or vice versa.
So it could be anything
that oxygen molecules do,
what the objective is
that you're focusing on
is of course, gonna depend
on what kind of story
you're trying to tell,
and the whatever point
you're trying to make.
And then the obstacles in the way might be
insufficient activation
energy or not enough molecules
of that other element
available, or whatever it is.
You can make a story out of anything.
What particular challenges
does that give rise to?
Of course, the big challenges
to what degree is it appropriate
to anthropomorphize a non-human subject?
Is it okay to give human
features or human attributes
to something that is non human?
This is something that you kind of have
to use your own judgement about.
A little anthropomorphization
can go a long way.
If you wanted to put eyeballs
on the oxygen molecule,
or give it a name, or talk
about its hopes and dreams,
that can work really well,
depending on the audience
that you're trying to reach.
So if you're trying to talk to an audience
of small kids, young kids,
and your goal for those young kids
is to get them to
understand something about
how elements interact with each other
or how chemical bonds work,
then a little anthropomorphization
can really help them understand that,
and that can be really effective.
If you're talking to the board
of the Leakey Foundation.
Anthropomorphization can work really well
with adults as well because
it makes it fun and playful.
The one thing you wanna be careful of
is that you don't want to
use anthropomorphization
to an extent that might actually interfere
with the scientific topics
that you're discussing.
So for example, when I give tours of our
Museum of Paleontology
at University of California, Berkeley,
to school groups, even, let alone adults,
if I'm telling them about our T Rex,
and I wanna tell them
something about evolution,
I don't wanna say something
like T Rex wanted to fly
so it sprouted wings and became a bird,
because that totally goes against
what evolution actually is
or how it actually happens,
it gives you an entirely false account
of how evolution actually happens.
Instead, I might tell a
story like relatives of T Rex
in their pursuit of food
and shelter and safety
and you basic things
that all animals need.
Some of them evolved
feathers at one point,
and maybe those were used
to keep warm at first.
But then over time, they
started realizing that Oh,
these feathers actually
can help me fly as well.
And then they ended up flying
and that's how we got birds.
Some version of that, that
would be more accurate,
but also still fun and making it a story
with characters and obstacles
and objectives and such.
- [Meredith] Okay, we
have another question.
- Great.
- [Meredith] "When your research narrative
"involves many working pieces and people
'like it's a highly collaborative project,
"what are the professional
responsibilities
"embedding your story before
you publish them on a blog?"
For example, information posted online
might affect permitting,
Community Relations,
management concerns for a (mumbles).
- Wonderful question, very
important consideration.
If your research involves lots of people,
and you're posting a story
about your research online,
should you check with your colleagues?
Absolutely.
Especially if you think
there might be a chance
that it could affect their
ability to get future permits
or affect their community
relations, management concerns.
Excellent, excellent point.
Yeah, if you think that
any of those factors
might be a concern, then
I would definitely check
with your colleagues before
publishing anything public
about your research,
whether it's a blog post,
or a scientific article,
or an interview that
you do on a radio show,
like whatever it is, definitely,
you should always be in
contact with your colleagues
about how much information can be shared
at any given point about this research.
Absolutely.
- [Meredith] Yeah, this
is along those lines,
writing and publishing a story
before the scientific
papers are published.
How can you approach that?
- Another great question,
what about writing or publishing a story
before the scientific paper is published?
Again, this is gonna be
at your discretion and your judgment.
And I think it kind of depends on
how much detail you're
going into about your work.
So for example, I've given public talks,
and I've done interviews
about some of my own research
in my field work about projects
that are not yet published
in scientific journals, I'm
still writing the papers.
So in those cases,
I am careful to not go
into too much detail
about the actual scientific
results of the project.
But even without going
into those specifics
that I wanna say, for the
actual scientific publication,
I can still talk plenty
about the experience
of doing the fieldwork,
the experience of working
in the museum collections
where I was looking at my fossils.
So I can say, I study fossil lizards
and fossil crocodiles, for example.
And they come from the
western interior of the US,
and it's such a fascinating
place to work in,
especially because when
these animals were alive,
that area looked like a jungle
and it's now it's a desert
and that's really, really
cool to think about.
So I can bring in a lot
of those vivid details
without getting into the
scientific specifics.
In that case, and then after
I published that paper,
then I can bring those
specifics into the story,
in future iterations that I
might share with audiences.
So I think it just depends, on what again,
what kind of audience
you're trying to reach,
and how much detail you are at liberty
to share at that point.
But I wouldn't let that
stop you from talking
about your work at all.
Maybe you're just only gonna talk about it
to a certain level of specificity.
- [Meredith] Okay, we have
a couple more questions.
I'm gonna start with this one.
"Should the story be simple?
"Or could it be started or
created in a complex manner
"and then you gradually simplify it,
"like maybe editing it
down or removing parts
"or I think that's the."
- Interesting, again, I think it depends
on the audience that you're
trying to reach and the context.
If you're, writing a blog
post, and you're trying
to reach an audience with
an invested and sophisticated level
of interest in your topic,
then you can probably make
it a little more complex.
If you're trying to reach
a broader general audience,
I would opt for something's
more simple and more broad.
And focusing more on
like the universal themes
rather than the specifics.
And it's gonna depend on what
you're trying to accomplish,
and also how long you want it to be.
In terms of if you're
asking about the process
of developing the story,
it can be hmm,
I think it can be.
Ultimately you wanna go for less is more
something that is more simple,
can really still pack a big punch.
Very often when scientists
are developing stories,
they're going to start
with a lot of details
no matter what I certainly do,
because there's so much I
would love to talk about
and then over time I distill it
further and further and further.
And I get down to what are
the most salient points here
that I'm trying to make?
What are the most important
details to include?
And all this other stuff maybe
is actually not so essential.
So I would opt for less
is more as a default.
- [Meredith] Yeah,
there's a related question
about story length.
Is there like one length of
story that will captivate people
or doesn't really vary?
- Great question.
I think it totally depends on the context.
There are plenty of
great stories on YouTube
that are seven minutes or shorter.
A story can be 30 seconds long,
it can be as short as a
joke with a punch line.
A story can be a two hour film,
it can be an entire 10
hour film or TV series.
For the specific purpose of the worksheet
that we shared with you
for writing blog posts,
I'll let you answer that question.
Is there a particular
length for these blog posts
that you have in mind?
- [Meredith] Well, we like to have them
like six to 800 words not very long
and we like to have lots of pictures.
- Great, yeah.
- [Meredith] Online that really helps.
- Visuals are important,
pictures whenever possible.
Yeah, I would say in general
for publishing stuff online,
six to 800 words is a good length,
you want something that
people can read in like,
five to eight minutes or so.
- [Meredith] Yeah.
Okay, we have one last
question that I see.
"Is it appropriate to
take dramatic license
"and create fiction based on real things
"like a fictional character in the past,
"who might have been adversely
affected by some event
"that, the scientists discovered
"probably happened
while studying the lab?"
- Is it appropriate to
take dramatic license
or create fiction based on real things?
That can absolutely be effective
and whether it's appropriate or not,
again, that would be
up to your discretion.
It can be very powerful to use,
dramatized characters to tell a story.
Like for example, there was
a really excellent series
that came out on HBO last
year called Chernobyl
In that story the way that they told it,
many of the characters
were based on real people
or depicting actual real people
who were involved in those events.
One of the main characters,
the character played by Emily Watson,
she was a fictionalized character,
but she was based on the work of a lot
of real scientists who actually worked
on exposing what had actually
happened at Chernobyl.
And they found that for the purposes
of telling the story in the series,
it was easier and more effective
for the purpose of the story,
to have all of that work
done by lots of people
represented in this one
character that they created.
But then they acknowledge that at the end
of the show that this person
wasn't actually a real person,
but all of her work is based on the work
of real people, and we
acknowledge their contributions.
So it can really just depend.
And I think as long as you are upfront
about what is fictionalized,
what is not fictionalized,
and many TV and films do this all the time
when they're talking about real events.
And I think as long as
you're just upfront about it,
and what you are depicting
with your dramatization,
or your fictional character
is still getting at the truth
of what happened or what this is about,
then that can be really powerful.
- [Meredith] Okay, that
is our last question.
So I think you have a couple
of resources to share.
- Yes, wonderful.
Thank you so much for
your excellent questions.
And this has been just
really, really a pleasure.
So just to wrap up, as a recap
some of the stuff that we discussed today,
we talked about how stories
actually affect the brain
and stories, make information
memorable and hold attention.
We talked a little bit about connecting
with your science at a personal level,
thinking about who is your audience
and what is your goal for that audience.
We talked a bit about
different story structures
that can help, like the dramatic arc,
Hero's Journey, story spine,
and using those essential story elements,
main character, objective,
obstacles, stakes, etc.
So I encourage you all to
continue to play around
with this, experiment with it.
Try versions of your story.
Hopefully that worksheet will
help you walk through it.
Try different iterations of it,
try them out on test audiences,
try them out on your family and friends,
and have fun, that's the
most important thing.
Just have fun with it,
and don't focus so much
on getting the story right,
focus on telling the story
that you feel compelled to tell
that is going to reach your
target audience effectively.
So a few resources to help you out.
If you go back one.
If you go to my website,
www.Sarah-elshafie.com
there's a lot of resources
available on there.
If you want to learn more
about science storytelling
and science communication in general,
one resource we have.
I've run a number of these
Science Through Story workshops
all over the place
and some of them I've even
been joined by colleagues
from the film industry,
including in this case,
some colleagues from
Pixar Animation Studios,
and some of those workshops
we've been fortunate enough
to have some really
talented sketchnote artists
in the audience that took
some illustrated notes
during the workshop.
So those are all on my
website, freely accessible,
and those can be available
to you as a resource.
We also have, I mentioned before
that I ran a symposium on
science through narrative
with both scientists and artists
from different disciplines presenting
on the same platform
about how do you engage
broad audiences with
science using storytelling
from lots of different perspectives?
So many of those speakers
actually wrote papers,
not just myself.
But we also had a video game developer,
a data visualization artist,
and dance theater director,
several scientists who work
with the animation industry,
lots of different perspectives.
We had a team of grad students
who started their own online show,
a lot of really, really cool work
and they all weighed in
and wrote these papers
for you, for everybody.
And they're available
online open access,
which I'm so happy about.
And they were written for anybody.
They're published in a peer
reviewed biology journal,
integrative and comparative biology,
but they are written such
that anybody can read them
and get something out of it.
I refer high school
students to those papers
for workshops that I do
with high school students,
and they enjoy the papers too,
so anybody can read them.
And all links to all those papers
are available on my website.
And these are just a few other resources
that I highly recommend.
Links are also available on my website,
or if you just Google
them, you'll find them.
Pixar In a Box, is a
really wonderful resource.
That's something that
Pixar Animation Studios
developed with Khan Academy.
And it's available for free open access
on KhanAcademy.Org.
They have whole units
about math and geometry
and coding and everything.
They also have an entire season
about the art of storytelling.
And that was completely separate
from these workshops
that I've been running,
but I love to refer people to them
because even if you just
watch all the videos,
there's about an hour and
a half or so of content.
They're really fun and engaging
and they cover a lot of great
essentials about storytelling
beyond even what we've discussed today.
So that's a great resource.
How to share your science story
is another webinar that I was part of
with my colleague, Nick
Dipalma, Spacetime Labs
and several other practitioners.
And then When Science Speaks,
this is a podcast run by
my colleague, Mark Bear
and he had me as a guest at one point.
So those are all resources
available to you, online.
And thank you so much for tuning in today.
And if you're interested
in the Science Through Story workshops,
you can join my mailing list on my website
or follow me on Twitter.
I offer workshops to
the public periodically,
but this is actually the first time
that I've done a workshop as a webinar,
which has been such a great experience.
And I'm really excited
that you were all able
to tune in, thank you so much.
And I hope you enjoyed it.
I hope you find it useful
and I look forward to reading
your stories in the future.
- Thank you.
Yes, like she said,
thank you so much for being with us.
And we also look forward
to hearing your stories
and reading them.
And before you go, I just wanna tell you,
we're gonna be hosting
another webinar with Sara.
We haven't picked the date yet.
But it's gonna be about
visual storytelling
and it'll be a lot of fun.
So after this webinar, you'll get an email
with the video, the workshop,
so you can watch it later or share it
with a friend or colleague
and we hope you do.
We'll also send you a link
to where you can submit
stories for our blog.
And if you have questions,
please email us.
Ask us anything you'd
like about telling stories
about your work.
So thank you so much.
- Bye.
- Bye.
