Written by Sally Ireri, Zoe Gillespie, and Rachel Hexamer Rash of the GSA Early Career Scientist Communication and Outreach Subcommittee. Graphics by Leah Dobossy. Additional feedback and edits by Deepika Gunasekaran, Rithika Sankar, Jessica Velez, and advisors Dina Navon and Rajaram Vishnupriya.

How many robotic talks and lectures have you experienced in your scientific journey? Probably more than you can count! As scientists, we typically prioritize accuracy when communicating our work but sometimes neglect to ensure the audience remains engaged. One way to hold your audience’s attention during presentations is to use a universal communication tool: storytelling. 

Building a narrative into your presentation increases the audience’s ability to understand and recall your work.1 Familiar stories tend to follow certain structures, such as the hero’s journey, where the titular hero leaves their quiet home life and embarks on an adventure, undergoing trials and eventually earning their reward and returning home. Generally, a narrative framework will introduce the problem, the chain of events that solve said problem, and the resolution. Frameworks such as the hero’s journey focus on the characters, which may be more appropriate for informal talks and help engage lay audiences. 

A modified version used in more rigorous scientific communication is the ABT (And-But-Therefore) framework which allows the communicator to start with the context (And), discuss the conflict/problem (But), then lay out the steps taken to reach the solution (Therefore). Another metaphor commonly used to structure scientific narratives is the cute baby, scary werewolf, and silver bullet. The cute baby is the important point being presented to the audience, the scary werewolf is the problem the work will address, and the silver bullet is the methods that will be employed to metaphorically slay the werewolf.

Identify your target audience

Having clarity on your target audience is critical to ensure that you can build your scientific story in a manner that will engage said audience; written and spoken scientific communication to the public versus to your colleagues in the field may vary drastically and depends heavily on your communication goals. Your target audience may be predetermined if you are attending a conference, or you might be looking to expand your scientific outreach. In all cases, it is important to consider the composition of your audience. In a high school you may be dealing with a younger age range and might need to introduce a high-school level background with specific concepts to enable students to have a high level takeaway. At a conference, you may have an interdisciplinary mix of people working on a common disease (e.g., bioinformaticians, bench scientists, and clinicians all working on breast cancer), in which case you could give a very brief breast cancer overview. However, as a bench scientist you may need to expand on your methodologies and the significance of your work in order to make it accessible to this wider audience. You can reach out to organizers, research the conference and check its website, or ask peers who have previously attended in order to learn who the attendees are, their expertise, and the expectations of the talk. A few minutes of research into your audience will ultimately enable better planning and delivery of your scientific narrative. 

Use storytelling elements to increase your impact

After identifying your target audience, you should develop a narrative that will appeal to them. In addition to the ABT framework, using storytelling elements could be a memorable way to organize a longer or more developed narrative. Gustav Freytag, a 19th century German playwright, created a pyramid to illustrate the essential elements of storytelling. 

Freytag’s pyramid begins with exposition (harmony)—in your case, setting up the story by explaining the significance of the field and your motivation for your research, further relating it to your audience’s interests. You can explain the set of knowledge we had before your research. Real-life scenarios, analogies, or statistics help your audience see the broader picture. It may also be helpful to think of the scientists involved as characters in your story, including the specific roles they have played.

Next, the inciting incident (disharmony) is the trigger for the rest of the story—the gap in the current knowledge or change in the field. The rising action follows with your initial research insights, and perhaps they do not fully answer the question or provide conflicting results. Eventually, this will lead to the climax or turning point as your main question is about to be answered. During the falling action, you can describe the aftermath of the climax as your research wraps up, including the significance of your research for this particular audience in the resolution, reinforcing why it matters. The denouement (new harmony) wraps up the story and shows the impact of your research on the field.

Throughout and after your story, ensure you emphasize the take-home message. Repeating the key findings or implications of your work will make it more memorable and signal its importance. To avoid becoming redundant, you can also use a “sister sentence,” which is a reorganized version of your original sentence that reinforces the message. Ending with a brief summary will add further clarity.

The process of scientific discovery is not always linear, and not every discovery has a dramatic climax; however, incorporating the ABT framework and Freytag’s storytelling elements can be useful to demonstrate the impact of your research to different audiences. These guidelines can help you stay focused on the take-home message.

References

    1. Dahlstrom MF. Using narratives and storytelling to communicate science with nonexpert audiences. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014;111 Suppl 4(Suppl 4):13614-13620. doi:10.1073/pnas.1320645111

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