Your stories do not belong to you.
They belong to your audience. It might sound harsh and unfair but I find that writing with this in mind brings stories alive in a special way.
At minimum, the beginnings of your stories do not belong to you.
Give those first moments to your audience fully and watch your stories take off!
Common mistakes
Most science communication mistakes occur in the first 5 seconds. The first line is usually:
❌ announcing what you are about to talk about
“Today I will talk to you about this thing, because of this other thing, and we will start from the beginning chronologically…”
❌ giving a broad topic full of jargon
“What is the xyz of BPLkWS which only 0.000005% of the population actually knows what it means…”
❌ making it overtly serious
"We at X take great care and responsibility to… ”
and … crickets.
Science stories have one common shortfall, they can quickly become radically boring!
Let’s fix that…
hook’em. Woo them!
I despise the whole premise of “hooking” an audience.
You are talking to people that are going to invest, use, ride or even consume your technological marvel, in the least we need to respect that their understanding is important.
“A good writer, like a good lover, must create a pact of trust with the object of his/her seduction that remains qualified, paradoxically, by a good measure of uncertainty, mystery and surprise."
So taking a lesson from Francine, we need to wow this audience, while dancing in between the guardrails of not making things too silly or too serious…
and the first impression is what matters the most!
These are the 3 questions that I ask myself when writing scripts for videos:
If someone hears the first sentence, can they understand the topic of the video?
Does it open a curiosity loop? Are they intrigued? Have I set the stage so that they understand the core topic but trust that they will learn something new?
Have I explained this topic in a way that a 10-year old can understand? Are big words necessary? (the answer is almost always, no.)
If you pass every first sentence through this test, your science stories will start to resonate more.
Example
You want to talk about EPIGENETICS!
Option 1:
Today, we will talk about the epigenetic changes that occur during carcinogenesis for…
Option 2:
Cancer cells can take over little “switches” that sit on top of your DNA.
Their name is epigenetic factors.
They are the maestros of your DNA, they don’t encode for things like your eye or hair color, but they control the expression of all sorts of genes, and that is why…
Which video would you continue watching?
Conference speak is almost always best retained… for conferences.
[P.S Another great tip is to write each sentence on its own as I did above, playing with the length of your sentences is a great way to keep the pace of your writing interesting.]
Next week
We will talk about how to chose the right pieces to build a story that is both entertaining and accurate.
Always learning,
Giota
Build that house!
Sci Comms inspiration
1/ PsiQuantum cofounder and CSO Pete Shadbolt rode on a bike while giving a brief overview of quantum computers and the industry as a whole.
2/ Dr Cal produces short form video on all things genetics (while usually doing tissue culture). A low-edit, low-effort format and style that can capture even the most novice audience. Notice how the entire video is about genetic engineering with lots of details about cool milestones that we have achieved, while starting…. with Fantastic 5!
@dr.cal.ur.science.pal We’re gettin weird again #science #biology #fyp #lab #bio #medicine #marvel #fantastic4 #fantasticfour #fantasticfourfirststeps #fantastic... See more
3/ Dr. Jennifer Khan, is a scientist and VC with a focus on biomanufacturing and synthetic biology, just from the first sentence you know exactly what kind of information you are about to receive (also great formatting for easy reading)
