HAMMOND -- At ELOS Environmental, newly hired marketers and professional writers are immediately thrown in the deep end of wetlands mitigation jargon, technical phrasing, scientific language, and enough acronyms to fill a company style guide. The Louisiana wetlands consultation and mitigation company, which was recently acquired by new owners, has no training program in place for a professional writer, but there are a couple of things the new company owners are doing right besides throwing the new writer in deep water - assigning the new person a “buddy,” and encouraging current technicians and scientists to be available to the newly hired writer for questions. ELOS also played it right by throwing me into the middle of the proposal writing process and giving me an important task to complete. At ELOS I had two “buddies” - one trained in science, and one trained in marketing. I also felt like I had an advantage as a fiction writer because I believed that communicating science to the general public is more effective through the use of narrative.
The Forbe’s technology council's recent advice in “13 Methods For Accelerating The Learning Curve For New Tech Team Members'' advises writers to “Start Backwards [and ] focus on use cases to understand why and how the tech can help realize results. This will help your talent better understand the tech and associate [the science] with
real-life tasks” (Forbes Technology Council). ELOS’ motto is “Where Natural Environments Meet Human Interests.” They are an environmental consulting firm knowledgeable in federal and state laws and regulations required for land and industrial developers. The company also offers several other science-based services such as environmental monitoring, GIS Mapping, Industrial Hygiene, Disaster Recovery, and cultural resources - an archeological discovery process. They receive contracts from parish governments, school systems, industry, businesses, and landowners. At this stage is where the new technical writer comes in, and because their company relies on obtaining new clients, their marketing materials and proposals must communicate science to two different types of audiences - one being B2B (business to business), and one being to clients not trained or completely knowledgeable of the technical subject matter.
The sales representative of a consulting firm like ELOS will many times find themselves trying to convince a city’s mayor or administrator to choose them over a field of other contractors and consultants. So it is very important to know that every proposal is a competition. And, it is very important that the professional writer do the best job possible communicating the science and the nature of their business in a compelling and memorable manner, versus just laying out the bare facts of the project. Owner of ELOS Jay Prayther had this dilemma weighing on him when he asked for writing in the company’s marketing materials that the folks in the boardroom could find readable, and more importantly - he needed it to persuade his readers to choose ELOS.
The amount of scientific data flowing in and out of ELOS is daunting, even for technicians used to myriad streams of information. It takes a team of people crunching
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numbers and articulating data to come up with readable reports and promotional text. The marketing department - one guy, his marketing intern, and me, a professional writing intern - was responsible for branding and messaging to other science and tech companies, as ELOS does a lot of collaborative work with similar companies, but most of our writing was to promote the company and secure new contracts. Prather told me that the typical audience for the company’s marketing materials are city and parish administrators and a few civil engineers, not hydrologic scientists like the kind working for ELOS. “We need the writing to be more narrative, more readable,” Prather said. “We want the writing to be substantive but readable.” Being a graduate student interested in copywriting for highly technical fields, plus being in a Creative Writing emphasized curriculum, my instincts were to go straight to the structure of narrative and storytelling to find the most readable answers.
Professional writers at science-based companies such as ELOS may face a steep learning curve when first coming on board. Not only are they facing a challenge in learning the science at hand, which they have been hired to write about, but there are also unique considerations they must take into account when turning science data into readable prose. There is a great deal of literature out there to help scientists become better writers, because apparently scientists are a bunch that tend to loathe the writing end of science, yet, little do they, and the professional writer, know the structure of storytelling may be their most effective tool to communicate their work and data. The same strategies borrowed from the creative writing world to communicate science can be used for the development of professional writers for science industries, as well as helping scientists communicate science to the public. This paper will explore how
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science is proving that the use of narrative writing and storytelling are proven ways to increase learning of scientific principles and data to non-experts such as the new tech-writer and members of city councils.
In anthropology it is common knowledge that cultures across the world use storytelling in the edification of its members. Stories have also been used to pass on the expected moral capacity of community members and to pass on culture, beliefs in the spiritual and religion, and the promotion of modes of living that serve the greater good. Published on the Harvard Business blog, psychologist and expert storyteller Lani Peterson writes “[s]torytelling has the power to engage, influence, teach and inspire listeners[,]” and citing scientific research she points out the chemical makeup of our brains and how it functions when we hear a story:
“Scientists are discovering that chemicals like cortisol, dopamine and oxytocin are released in the brain when we’re told a story. Why does that matter? If we are trying to make a point stick, cortisol assists with our formulating memories. Dopamine, which helps regulate our emotional responses [and] keeps us engaged. When it comes to creating deeper connections with others, oxytocin is associated with empathy, an important element in building, deepening or maintaining good relationships” (“The Science of Storytelling,” Harvard Business Publishing).
Peterson points out that stories are the way we make sense of the world. They can also be a view to a world we have never seen before and don’t yet understand. “It is through story that our minds form and examine our own truths and beliefs, as well as discern how they correlate with the truths and beliefs of others” (Peterson). These aspects of
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narrative and learning can be invaluable to the newly hired professional writer tasked with learning what may seem like a new language. The Forbes magazine Technology Council suggests that along with a solid onboarding process for new hires that companies would do well to immerse their new writers in the company’s culture and make sure they have access to technical training. Another bit of advice from Forbes involved assigning a “buddy” to help the new person learn the culture and the science of the company. The culture of the company may provide the story structure for future content.
A report published by the National Academy of Sciences says “[r]esearch suggests that narratives are easier to comprehend and audiences find them more engaging than traditional logical-scientific communication [ ]” (Dahlstrom). In other words, storytelling is an evolutionary process our brains developed for learning. In essence, our brains are hardwired for story. “In a direct comparison with expository text, narrative text was read twice as fast and recalled twice as well, regardless of topic familiarity or interest [...] narrative cognition is thought to represent the default mode of human thought[ ]” (Dahlstrom). Narratives give readers a way to simulate an experience, i.e. practice things in their minds before actually doing them. Story and narrative are life affirming instincts of anticipation “which would serve to better predict cause-and-effect relationships and model the thoughts of other humans in the complex social interactions that define our species” (Dahlstrom).
It becomes clear that tools the creative writer uses can be used for learning science on the fly. “Specifically, educational content that is more integral to the plotline of the narrative requires less cognitive resources for comprehension and leads to
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enhanced learning[ ]” (Dahlstrom). Four factors that narratives offer which may improve learning: dramatization, personalisation, emotionalization, and fictionalization (Dahlstrom). Narratives can be very persuasive “[b]ecause narratives are able to provide values to real-world objects without argument, it is difficult to counter their claims.” This aspect of science + narrative is the drawback of using narrative to learn science, but for those willing to walk the line of truth, it is only a temporary drawback, or pause, to consider how the story pairs point by point with the scientific data. The power of narrative to persuade becomes especially important when professional writers are communicating science that is controversial. Dahlstrom writes that for writers there are ethical considerations if the writer is to use narrative. He said communicators writing science in the form of narrative have three ethical questions they should address first:
1. Is narrative being employed for persuasion or for science? There are two modes of thinking that Dahlstrom explores this question with. He uses the “Public Understanding in Science and Technology” model which assumes a lack of understanding of science by the general public and the effort to remedy this by educating people and thereby tamping down controversy. There is also the “Public Engagement in Science and Technology” model. This is in opposition to the first model in that it “considers controversies about science a necessary and beneficial process of aligning science with societal values” (Dahlstrom). With this model the communication is to “engage a wider audience and increase the inclusion of science within the debate, regardless of which side it is used to support” (Dahlstrom). The role of the professional writer is to be mindful of the
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way they create science stories presented to the public, understanding the power narrative has and how substantially it can influence the debate.
2. What level of accuracy should be maintained? “Narratives contain multiple layers of accuracy that may or may not be necessary to maintain, depending on the purpose of the communication” (Dahlstrom). For example, Sesame Street uses a wide narrative, or sometimes a mere theme, for characters to play out each episode with the end-goal being to teach basic math and language elements to preschoolers.
3. Should a narrative be used? Some science communications may draw suspicion if delivered in a narrative format. “It may be that nonexperts so align their expectation of how scientists should communicate with the logical-scientific processing pathway, that an otherwise appropriate narrative may be perceived as violating their normative expectations of science communication” (Dahlstrom).
Or, maybe they think narrative is too preschool for them to even consider. But these neurological findings are relatively new discoveries in learning concerning narrative and storytelling and offer the professional writer a new range of tools to consider and use to talk about science. But, in building these narratives, or in scaling another form of science communication, the first step is translating the data for the target audience at the level of the sentence, paying attention to the physicality of the sentence, paying attention to the structure of prose and understanding readers’ expectations offers the new professional writer strategies to increase learning and understanding within the target audience. In 2016 Tabek (et. al) created a guide for undergraduate science writer’s and advised them to “try to maintain the same subject
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throughout a section and mix up sentence structure in order to emphasize different concepts. Keep in mind that words or ideas placed toward the end of a sentence often convey the most importance” (423). This same approach is something that professional writers should keep in mind when trying to decipher or condense scientific data into something readable. Think of it as the science of expectation, or more instinctively, the science of anticipation.
Readers have expectations. George D. Gopen and Judith Swan sub-headed their article “The Science of Scientific Writing'' with this slug line: “If the reader is to grasp what the writer means, the writer must understand what the reader needs” (550). Readers gain much of their understanding based on the structure of the prose. “This methodology of reader expectations is founded on the recognition that readers make many of their most important interpretive decisions about the substance of prose based on clues they receive from its structure” (Gopen and Swan, 550). Professional writers can take advantage of these expectations and “can better control the degrees of recognition and emphasis a reader will give to the various pieces of information being presented” (Gopen and Swan, 551).
In my approach to writing science for ELOS Environmental, or to be more exact, the job of re-writing, I searched for the meaning of the material first at the level of the sentence. Once I was able to scale the meanings found in scientific reports, which included deconstructing sentences in the manner that Gopen and Swan advised in putting sentences together, I was able to discover meaning and come to understand what it was exactly that the scientists of Louisiana’s swamplands were doing out there in the field and what they were reporting back to us about. ELOS marketing materials
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involved descriptions of their ongoing and completed projects. The text was replete with unnecessary wording and there were many unidentified acronyms, esoteric scientific words, phrases, and terminology specific to the scientific language about wildlife habitats of U.S. waters and natural habitats in Louisiana wetlands.
To demonstrate this method, let us look at deconstructing and translating a simple two-sentence paragraph from the article “Overtopping Flow Protection,” by Bryan N. Scholl, et al. This company builds bridges and dams and uses a blog to educate and attract contractors. Let us say that my client - the Contech Quickcrete* company - wants their target audience to be folks in city hall, school board members, or supervisors of the parish. Here is the original paragraph:
“To properly evaluate the level of erosion protection needed, a design discharge must first be ascertained. This may be accomplished using the historical record, isohyetal maps, probable maximum flood (PMF) or any number of generally accepted methods” (Scholl et al.).
Before I present my translation, I need to show the technical approach to rewriting sentences, though very readable to someone with insider knowledge, they are esoteric to the uninitiated. I depended on syntax within the prose of scientific data and description and used this structure as a jumping off point. These are the structures and reader expectations which professional writers should use when composing or translating materials:
● Subject-verb: Readers expect a grammatical subject to be followed immediately by the verb. Anything of length that intervenes between
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subject and verb is read as an interruption, and therefore as something of lesser importance (Gopen and Swan, 552).
● The stress position: It is a linguistic commonplace that readers naturally emphasize the material that arrives at the end of a sentence. We refer to that location as a ‘stress position’ (Gopen and Swan, 552).
● The secondary stress position: These occur with the proper use of a colon or semicolon (Gopen 552).
● The topic position - the beginning of the sentence.
“In the stress position the reader needs and expects closure and fulfillment; in the topic position the reader expects perspective and context” (Gopen 554). Gopen and Swan summarize the approach by pointing out that they have covered three “rhetorical principles based on reader expectations:” 1. Verbs should follow their subjects with as few intervening words as possible, 2. Units of discourse should be about one thing, serving one subject, 3. Information that needs to be emphasized should be put at the end of the sentence. This goes along with previous advice given by Forbes Science and Technology Council in going at the science from the back - they have sort of a motto about composing sentences - leaning back and looking forward. “Readers expect the material occupying the topic position to provide them with linkage (looking backward) and context (looking forward)” (Swan and Gopen, 556).
So, in the above paragraph example I begin by first listing the words and phrases that I do not understand the meaning of. Things I know I need to look up to fully understand the paragraph include, “level of erosion,” “design discharge,” “the historical
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record,” “isohyetal maps,” and ”propable maximum flood.” Luckily for us we have the internet to help us research, and this may also be a good time to touch base with your in-house science buddy, to understand the science behind the words. Also, when I am looking at these two sentences I can not help but imagine the human being behind the information - someone is doing the science. In this instance the community is in need of an updated dam on their local lake. My audience and the science technician are both characters in my translation.
Here is my hypothetical translation of the above writing sample which I might would present at a town council meeting that also includes some sense of the company culture (please note that my translations are typically far shorter):
Contech Engineered Solutions builds dependable infrastructure meant to protect property and built to last. Recently the company built a dam in Tangipahoa Parish that protects the surrounding community from erosion and flooding of the Amite River. Contech’s technicians evaluated the site of the dam by calculating what the water level would have to be for it to start flooding, and finally eroding the dam enclosure and surrounding property. Contech consultants used special maps that have details of the surface of the terrain and used the mathematical method known as probable maximum flood (PMF) to make a design for construction that will last for generations.
This hypothetical scientific-based narrative was easy to write and can teach outsiders what they need to know. It may even inspire them to research at higher levels of scientific knowledge.
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I wanted to end this discussion of science writing with a successful professional writer, Wes Williams of Jackson, Mississippi, who is the creative director of the Ramey Agency. Williams writes that he often finds himself having to learn and immerse himself in what seems to be a whole new language in order to provide marketing material for scientific and technical industries. He confirms my belief that any company of science or technology can benefit from the power that narrative writing and storytelling offer, and through the power of storytelling companies can show their true colors and become the icons of their industries. Wes adds, “You must offer something more than a clever headline or pretty picture. [... If] you can teach the reader/viewer/listener something new your brand becomes the authority” (Williams). The famous non-fiction writer Lee Gutkind echoed this sentiment when he wrote, “My thesis was (and always has been) that you can communicate even a difficult, scholarly subject to the general public by using creative nonfiction techniques—narrative.”
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