That’s what you hear in the lobby of science meetings. The standard reply is, “I heard a great talk this afternoon—the speaker told a really neat story about ...”

And there you have it. He or she told a good story. You want to know how to interest the public in your research? Tell a good story.

As a scientist, I never quite knew this, but since becoming a filmmaker, it’s obvious.

At age thirty-eight I resigned from my tenured professorship of marine biology and entered film school at the University of Southern California. From the first day, we were confronted with one basic principle—the most powerful means of mass communication is through the telling of stories. From Greek mythology to today’s blockbuster movies, it’s clear—tell a good story and the world will listen.

It begins with a single, simple question: “What is your source of tension?” This is the heart of a good story. This question seemed trivial to me when I began film school. It didn’t register until a decade later when I finally directed my own documentary feature film, “Flock of Dodos,” about the controversy over the teaching of evolution versus intelligent design.

As I hit a brick wall in the editing and found myself sitting for days staring at a mountain of wonderful interview footage, I began flashing back to that question. Like a life preserver thrown to me in a stormy ocean, the question became my salvation.

As I dug deeper, I realized the answer itself tends to be a question. Just look at one of the simplest and most popular of fiction genres, the murder mystery—the source of tension is a question and virtually its own genre—“Who dunnit?”

The more I immersed myself in this world of questions, the more I began to flash back to one of the highest compliments for a scientist—when someone says, “That scientist is asking great questions.”

And there you have it. The Rosetta Stone. The link between the science world and literature. Great stories and great scientific investigations are built around great questions.

But maybe you’ll say, “Storytelling is just for fiction.” Sorry, but that’s not true. This is a shortcoming of today’s science education—the failure to make scientists realize they are storytellers, every bit as much as novelists. They just don’t like to admit it, or really even think about it. They tend to think stories mean Star Wars and Harry Potter. The truth is, stories are as equally important in nonfiction as fiction. They are the way we understand our world.

You want the linchpin of proof of the similarity? Scientists write their papers in the same three-act structure that novelists and filmmakers use to tell their stories. The standard format of a scientific research paper consists of an Introduction (Act I, in which the question is presented); Methods and Results (Act II, in which the question is explored); and Discussion (Act III, in which the question is answered). Thesis, antithesis, synthesis—same, same.

All of which leaves me over the years answering this question to friends and journalists: “How in the world did you go all the way from scientist to filmmaker?” These days my answer is simple: “It wasn’t much of a change. The two careers involve the same basic process—storytelling.”

Randy Olson runs Prairie Starfish Productions in Los Angeles, California. Olson's book "Don't Be Such a Scientist" is published by Island Press.

The obsevations of Randy Olson are correct.The impact of communication depends upon the way the communicator delivers it to the audiences.A subject can be made confusing if delivered shabily or in an uninteresting fashion.A story always has a greater impact than a simple dry lecture.I have seen it through my experiences.I am a bee scientist.During the early days of my carrier, for my presentations,I got prepared transparencies of many solitary bees making nests and working on flowers, and of honeybees working on flowers and in the hive/nest.These were prepared for two purposes viz. i) for academic purpose to deliver talks in the scientific community, and ii) for extension lectures to be delivered in the farmers'groups.While in the first case the efforts were purely in the form of dry lectures; in the latter case it had to be made an interesting story.The educated scientific community could understand the contents of even a dry lecture.But,to make comprehend these subjects to the lay men farmers,a story always worked as a more powerful means of communication, as the latter group needed to be made aware of the subject through the interesting stories.It did not finish here.I told these stories to my wife long back in early 80's.She can now argue more than me when there is a discussion on honeybees or uses of honey.Likewise, my two grand sons--Jay(8 years old) and Yash(5 years old) can make good discussion on honeybees than any other animals or their food sources.A story perhaps creats more interest in the listener than preaching your thought in any other way.

When the scientist presents, there is no popcorn, no giant screen, no Al Gore, no remote control, no comfortable armchair; as to the presentation, there rarely is suspense. Doesn't the title of the talk spill the beans? How would you like a mystery novel whose title is "The butler killed the maid in the library with a candlestick"! When the scientist prepares the story, where is the Director? The scriptwriter? The continuity-tracking expert? The story told by a movie is made of animated scenes; scenes, in a scientific presentation, are often static PowerPoint slides. Movie directors now how to stage a story so that the audience does not get lost through "jump cuts". A linear PowerPoint presentation inevitably destroys a good non-linear (yet continuous) story (have a look at the November 28 entry on the blog scientific-presentations.com to better understand why). So the task of the storyteller is far from trivial.
Let's talk more about how to make a good story from data and events, and how to make a good storyteller out of someone who falls asleep while reading a bedtime story to his/her kids. Story and storyteller are the two sides of a "GOOD" story.

I teach an introductory course for non majors in biology. I am resolving to ask a question at the beginning of each lecture next semester. However, I worry that my students will see these questions as trivial. I would welcome a discussion about how to frame stories in a context that plays upon students' natural curiosity.

writer highlights the point what these days scientists should do. story adds that extra edge to reseach for any layman to make engross in it.

Wonderful article - thanks!

I often team up with researchers to present research - either future research in a grant proposal or completed research in a report, paper, or brief technical article. As the other commenters have noted, presenting the information clearly and compellingly is critical for success. Some researchers are so engaged in their work that they tend to neglect "seting the scene" and putting the work in context. Deciding which aspects of the story we should focus on and how best to tell it takes time, but the results are worth the effort.

My parents are the most technically challenged people I know. My mother uses her computer to primarily play FreeCell, my father doesn't touch it at all, and neither carries the cell phone my brother gave them because they keep forgetting how it works. As a graduate student home for Thanksgiving one year, my mother asked what I was studying. When I proudly stated that I was investigating the control of ventilation, she remarked, "What's there to study? You breathe in, you breathe out."

Hence, very early in my career, it struck me that because I will need to deal with folks like them for many years to come - relatives, their friends, potential future spouses, people you'll meet during the Holidays, Congressmen, etc. - I would really need to develop the ability to convey just what I do in a way they would understand.

Frankly, I like to watch a lot of television. Also, I am a very auditory kind of person. Hence, I found that programs such as NOVA and National Geographic provide excellent examples of how to tell a great story. Each teaches anyone about anything, slowly, carefully, and interestingly, such that by the end of the hour, everyone has come away with some level of new knowledge. Working that same way when you present your own research will always leave the audience satisfied, one person or the whole room. Take a lesson. Watch some television.

Gauging your audience is also key to great story telling if you can interact with them. I start off as if I'm speaking to high schoolers, and I quickly work my way up the academic ladder when I know that they get what I'm saying. Once I have gauged where my audience is, I can adapt my explanations with relevant, understandable examples and correlates. For almost any person I have ever talked to, regardless of the level of education, I can explain any of my scientific research.

All of this truly takes work, care, and patience, invariably without any need to dumb it down. For many, this skill will take a lot of practice, but it is well worth the effort.

Telling a story is a great way to address the questions: Who cares? Why bother? and So What? If the audience (or readers) can not relate to why they should care about the work, they WILL sleep. It is also of paramount importance to know your audience (or readership). A technically specialized audience addressed without adequate technical content will feel they are being patronized. A non-technical audience subjected to a barrage of raw data will not get the story. At the same time, we should be honest in presenting the significance of our work, without inflation. This is the real challenge: to tell a story about science that a general audience will care about, without hyperbole.

The professors I loved also used stories. They would start with a simple daily-life situation and at the end, asked the key question (like why there was no frost under the tree). With such an introduction, and our eagerness to get to the answer, we all eagerly soaked up the day's lesson.

Usually, at least in biology and medicine, the speaker has three options (barring all theatricals) to make it interesting: a story in terms of a burning question and an ingenious or a serendipitous answer that makes people say 'aha'!; a historical perspective superimposed on the latest findings that bring a vastly different perspective to what is already there and thirdly a straight from the heart talk of why it makes difference to each listener and their lives.Isn't it all?
I find only two problems in this approach. Very few topics have enough depth gathered by the speaker to generate interest of this magnitude. In fact, sticking to the data speaks more of the insecurity of the speaker and the provisionality of his conlusions rather than the topic. Most professional research suffers from this. Having slept through many seminars and symposia, I can personally vouch for this.
Much has been said of brevity. In fact, the most satisfying moment for a speaker(unfortunately the way we organize our meetings hardly allows this, while interactive sessions with students allow this) is when he/she is egged on to tell more or gets into a huge debate, if not a fight. Sometimes the topic becomes so enticing that the session intend for an hour goes on for half a day at the insistence of the listeners rather than the speaker. That is the equivalent of a theatrical applause and demand for encore.
Scientific meetings are aften boring because we talk of the finished and polished science and are busy building images and arranging for next invitation rather than play the game to the hilt. But it is great when we do.

An excellent example in practice of telling Science as interesting stories is in the series of captivating science and technology lectures at TED.com

An important point not made by Randy is about length (time duration) of the story. TED conferences "tell it all" in flat 18 minutes or much less!!

Kudos to the organizers of TED.

Thanks for this Randy - so true! The science journalists get it and filmmakers get it. The trick is getting the scientists to accept it for all their presentations whether in front of an academic audience or the general public.

I developed "Bad Presentation Bingo" to show scientist how to NOT give bad presentations with data-filled slides inflicting PowerPointPain. I wish there were some way to force it in all scientists at every professional conference. Unfortunately, I think too many of those promoting public outreach by scientists are stuck in the rut that a public talk means - "Tell what you're gonna tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them."

So dull. So not memorable. And so bad for science appreciation. I guess we all just need to keep chipping away at it and hopefully the idea will catch on.

Science wouldn't be any fun at all if any rational viewer could draw the same conclusions from the same data. Can you imagine a seminar consisting of nothing but slide after slide of data? Fortunately, there is rarely enough information to allow a single logical conclusion except in the most uninteresting cases. In particular, the generation of new hypotheses require a great deal of creativity. This is well understood by most physicists, but unfortunately biology seems to have developed a persistent anti-creative streak that devalues ideas. Darwin, Pauling, Crick and Mitchell are examples of people capable of drawing novel conclusions by the exercise of intellect and creative power. We should stop pretending that science is cut and dried. It discourages our successors. Future progress requires that they continuously reinvent our view of the world.

Scientists don't view themselves as storytellers because they are still taught that data speak for themselves; present the results of your research and any rational reader should be able to draw the same conclusion.

The problem with this view -- a hang-on from the Enlightenment -- is that most readers are unable to grasp immediately the meaning and significance of the data. It isn't because they are daft, but because they don't understand the context surrounding the research.

Storytelling is the most effective way to convey that context to an audience of non-experts. This is what science journalists are so good at doing; and with their sudden departure from news sources, scientists will need to get better at telling stories themselves.

Thanks for this article, it is so accurate.

I've been in journalism for 30 years, a lot of that writing about science and technology. I've been preaching the importance of story almost from day 1. There's no other way to really interest the broader public, because they react to story and not to facts or issues.

If researchers want a bigger and more knowledgeable audience for their research they have to be able to couch it as story, either through telling it directly or through people like me.

The problem is that so very few scientists seem to understand that. They are even suspicious of the approach, they think it demeans their research. Why is that? How do you get them to understand?