Effective communication of your research, whether to scientists or lay audiences, is essential to ensure an audience’s understanding of and engagement with your work. While you might think that your research is compelling enough to warrant attention, you might not realize that embracing storytelling can improve the clarity and message of your research experience.
In my experience, some scientists bristle at the mention of storytelling and science in the same sentence. Some view stories as somehow opposed to hard facts or believe that a focus on form is superficial or detracts from the research. But stories are hardwired into our understanding of reality– including science. Research suggests that the use of narrative can increase engagement with, interest in, and the persuasiveness of scientific information. Storytelling isn’t just fluff– it is an essential communication strategy.
This article will help you:
- Understand the role of storytelling in science
- Define the structure of your scientific story
- Apply a narrative arc to the scientific information you are presenting
- Reverse-engineer effective presentations to identify storytelling elements
The shapes of stories
In his book Writing for Story, science journalist Jon Franklin says that “a story consists of a sequence of actions that occur when a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation that [they] confront or solve.” All stories have a complication, otherwise there would be no reason to tell the story. The complication is the deviation from the status quo whose resolution drives the plot. While each story is unique, there are common shapes that stories follow. One model for story structure developed by the American sociolinguist William Labov is particularly useful for framing scientific presentations. This structure consists of the following: abstract, orientation, complicating action, resolution, evaluation, and coda, as seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Labov’s narrative structure, which is particularly useful for scientific presentations.
But a story is more than information presented following a certain format: it is typically driven by a narrative arc that defines the shape of the story through the rise and fall of the complication. There are common narrative arcs that many stories follow, such as rags to riches or the hero’s journey, with their shape being determined by the change in the relative valence of the protagonist. That is, whether the character oscillates between positive and negative (success and failure or joy and misery), and in which direction, is dependent on the story, as are the relative starting and ending points. This concept was famously explained by the writer Kurt Vonnegut, and natural language processing has confirmed that most stories follow several basic emotional arcs.
In science, the relative valence of a project (rather than a protagonist in a traditional narrative) is most likely related to the completeness of knowledge about a subject, ranking from relatively less to relatively more complete knowledge. There are special cases when the valence may be more emotional, but for the typical scientific presentation, the audience’s level of knowledge on a subject is typically what will vary throughout the talk.
Figure 2. A conceptual figure showing how the audience’s relative knowledge of a subject changes throughout the arc of a presentation.
The narrative arc of a scientific presentation
Keep in mind that the structure suggested here is not meant to be overly prescriptive, but rather to provide a solid foundation from which you can tailor your presentation to your specific audience and communication strengths. If you have a compelling story that has motivated your research, you might want to start with that anecdote. Some scientists choose an engaging photo, a question, or an analogy. An interesting abstract section of your talk is crucial for audience engagement with the foundational ideas of your research, without which your talk will be confusing at best.
The audience should reach a peak of understanding after hearing about the field’s previous work (i.e. orientation) and be able to articulate the current state of the literature, at least to the extent you have articulated it. Then, as you introduce the research gap (i.e. complicating action), the audience should understand why your research gap represents a shortcoming of the current knowledge, and how your work aims to close that gap. As you explain what you did and what you found, the audience should see what these contributions are and be able to point specifically to the novel information your efforts produced.
Lastly, you will often want to end with future work, potentially even mentioning the limitations of your current work, if applicable. This necessarily means casting a bit of uncertainty on the hopefully tidy narrative you have just presented. At the end of the talk, our level of understanding has seen a net increase, both as an audience and a scientific community. Even if your study produced largely confusing or unexpected results, these have hopefully pushed understanding forward in some way. It is important to highlight how your efforts have increased knowledge on the topic at hand.
Importantly, note that the highs and lows of what is known and unknown are what drive the structure of the scientific story. The audience is expecting these twists and turns in understanding, and in fact, they are what makes a story interesting. The points where the audience is made aware of gaps and uncertainties are essential for driving the narrative. If everything was already known about this topic, why would you be giving this presentation? Similarly, why should we care about your next project, especially if it builds off of this one?
Breaking down the narrative arc of an effective scientific presentation
To see an example of a storytelling arc in a scientific presentation, let’s look at a presentation given by Kabir Peay, Director of the Earth Systems Program, Associate Professor of Biology and of Earth System Science, and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Delivered at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Faculty Forum, this 17-minute talk was part of a seminar series designed to give department members an idea of the varied, interdisciplinary research in the department. That means that the audience is composed of students and researchers outside of the speaker’s field of mycology.
Abstract
Peay starts, “[o]ften [ideas for sustainability solutions] have to do with… big things like changing energy policy or coming up with new sustainable food sources. Hopefully today what I will do is plant in your head the idea that there may be some other solutions that are a little bit less obvious but that are beneath our feet all the time as we’re walking around in the world. And to start, I want to begin talking about mushrooms. And this is my entree into thinking about subterranean sustainability solutions.” This short introduction gives us the audience a very high level understanding about the topic that Peay will be talking about: the unexpected and overlooked role of fungi in sustainability solutions.
Orientation
Peay then gives background about the structure of fungi, the network of “microscopic filaments, called hyphae, that emanate out from beneath the mushroom,” and the “intermingled plant and fungal [symbiosis] called a mycorrhiza.” He then explains how plants trade photosynthetically fixed carbon for nutrients from the mycorrhiza. This background, which includes striking visuals, is necessary for the audience to understand the rest of the talk, so it is given at the very beginning.
Figure 3. Clear visualizations can simplify complicated ideas, especially when providing background information during the orientation.
Complicating Action
Peay explains that there is “a disconnect between the [small] scales at which we’ve studied [mycorrhizal fungi] and the scales at which things like climate change are playing out. So until fairly recently it’s been very difficult to try and understand how these types of organisms might respond to climate change.” The screen then shows, in text, the research gap that motivates the rest of the talk: “How can we predict and leverage mycorrhizal symbiosis in the face of climate change?”
Figure 4. Making your research question explicit can be an effective way to engage the audience.
Had he been talking to a different audience, such as fellow experts in his specialized research area, he would have likely presented his research question differently. Peay is not framing his study as investigating the biogeography of mycorrhizal fungi, though this is what the study does. Instead he highlights the broader climate change mitigation impacts upfront, in line with the sustainability interests of his broad audience. The audience should have no doubts about your research question: make it crystal clear, because this complication motivates the rest of your story.
Resolution
Next comes the methods section. This is an essential part of any scientific presentation, more so when speaking within-field. Consider following Peay’s approach of the graphical abstract, which simplifies the hours and technical details that went into the analysis into a visually engaging and easy-to-follow outline.
Figure 5. Graphically representing your methods can help your audience follow the reasoning of your study, and how you got to your resolution.
He then explains the findings of his research, relying on figures to demonstrate his results. There’s a storytelling maxim that has become a cliche at this point: show, don’t tell. Your results are the time to show, not tell. Scientists are skeptical people, we want to see for ourselves that what you are presenting makes sense. A figure is much more compelling than a list of numbers, and will help your audience follow the logical steps along the narrative arc. Another example from Dr. Peay’s talk is to explicitly state what is novel about the results.
Evaluation
To finish out the talk, he expands the scope of the results, showing how mycorrhizal fungi can be used to be part of the solution. “Our group and others… believe that there’s a vast genetic potential out there… that could be harnessed to build novel sustainability solutions.” Such solutions, Peay admits, are still far off. Still, providing the audience with the long-term vision and end goal of the research will help them to see the importance of the work, even if the results are far off.
Coda
Lastly, Peay ends explicitly with a takeaway for the audience: “there is a vast potential for these mycorrhizal symbioses to be leveraged into potential sustainability solutions. There’s still a long way to go, but I think it’s something worth investing in.” This final take-home message is the coda that the audience will take with them after the talk, so it is important to neatly wrap up the likely messy story of the science.
Figure 6. Peay’s scientific talk mapped onto a narrative arc.
When mapping Peay’s talk onto the scientific narrative structure introduced previously, we can identify the points where the narrative shifts. Explicitly noting these plot points in the process of drafting a talk can help to clarify the logical flow of your presentation, and ensure you are following a structure your audience will recognize and follow.
Lastly, it is important to keep in mind that while the story that your research follows might be obvious to you, it might not be to other people. Practicing your story with others, such as labmates or those outside of your field, will help to refine your narrative and improve clarity.
Additional Resources
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