Welcome to Lesson #5 of the SciComm Society “Making An Impact” email course!
Yesterday, your homework was to write a social media post about your research project using the hero’s journey. How was that for you? Did you get any feedback about it?
In this lesson, we will adapt another storytelling approach to your SciComm projects and make your story more engaging and clear.
Now that you have a story, don’t write it as you would for other scientists. To get people on social media to stop scrolling and read your post, you need to tell your story in an active and eventful way.
For this, we use powerful language.
Unfortunately, as scientists, we are trained to use the passive voice, nominalisations and complex scientific phrases. But on social media, when communicating with non-scientists, we need to use the active voice. This makes sentences shorter.
The active voice also explains scientific processes as action-packed events, helping readers visualise what is happening. This helps them understand your science and make sense of what you’re telling them.
Since we are telling a story, and stories contain actions, we need to use the active voice.
By all means, avoid passive voice and nominalisations. Don’t use phrases such as “something is done” or “something is mediated” in your posts. These phrases are unclear.
There is no key player, and the reader does not even know what that key player is actually doing.
So, always ensure you use an active, clear voice. The formula is pretty easy: someone does something. You have a clear key player, and you describe their actions.
Instead of writing “Bacteria were grown”, say “We grew bacteria”. Here, the key players are you and your team, and the action is “We grew bacteria”.
This is active and easy to understand.
Another example is a nominalisation such as “Complex XYZ mediates the transport of”. Instead, write “Complex XYZ transports”.
Again, the active voice is much clearer.
Share your SciComm post
So, either write a new post from your post inbox or take a draft from the previous days. Rewrite it by replacing passive verbal phrases and nominalisations with active constructions that use powerful action verbs.
Do you see the difference? Is the science a lot clearer now? I’m sure your audience will think so too.