Tim Middleton, GfGD Advocacy Development Officer, writes on a freelance basis for a number of organisations and was previously the President of the Cambridge University science magazine, BlueSci. Here he offers a few thoughts on how to go about composing an engaging piece of popular science.
George Orwell had six rules for writers. It’s true that Orwell didn’t write a great deal of popular science, but as a master of the English language, his advice is a pretty useful place to start. The rules are as follows.
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
In other words, make it lively, make it simple, and use some common sense. Orwell sets out these rules in his essay on Politics and the English language, in which he rails unforgivingly against bad writing. “When you make a stupid remark,” says Orwell, “its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself”. The problem, he argues, is that bad writing spreads by imitation; it’s all too easy to copy another’s turn of phrase and soon you employ the same boring clichés as everyone else. But, he suggests more hopefully, “one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase into the dustbin where it belongs.”
Orwell offers stern advice and, as a writer, you should be regularly asking yourself some brutal questions. Is what you’re saying going to be the slightest bit interesting to read? Are people going to understand what you’re talking about? And why should they even care about what it is you have to say? Every time you pause, fingers hovering above the keyboard, these are the questions that should be echoing in your ears.
When it comes to popular science writing, you have to be especially judicious. It’s all too easy to be lured into a familiar, academic tone—even more so if you’re writing about your own area of expertise. As biologist Erik Ursin is quoted as saying in a paper amusingly entitled How to write consistently boring scientific literature, “Hell—is sitting on a hot stone reading your own scientific publications”. As a writer of popular science, though, you have the opportunity to make Hell marginally more bearable. If you’re currently engaged in academic research it might be fantastic fun to have a go at writing about your own work for a popular audience, but you have to be doubly careful that you aren’t tempted to make it too complicated. You’ll often produce a better article if you’re writing about something new to you; this may involve a modicum of extra reading, but the opportunity to flit between a series of utterly unconnected topics is one of the joys of being a science writer.
Two further aspects set popular science apart from ordinary scientific writing. The first, is an appreciation of narrative; a good feature article is not just a string of facts, but rather a complete, coherent storyline. The German playwright and novelist Gustav Freytag is credited with inventing the definitive five-act structure, a framework that has since become known as Freytag’s pyramid. The introduction must be intriguing; the middle section needs to develop ideas; and the ending has to sum up ‘where we are’. Often, a well-written piece will begin with an amusing anecdote and return, full circle, to the same idea at the end of the article. To achieve all of this in a punchy article is no easy task, and this is where it helps to have a pool of background notes to draw on in order to piece together the chunks that will make for the best possible overall story.
The second extra ingredient in a piece of popular science is people. You ought to include conflict, controversy, atmosphere, description, personality, quotations, interviews, examples and anecdotes—something human and something that’s going to be engaging.
Finally, you need a touch of polish. Proofreading is a laborious task but, alas, one of the most important stages of the whole writing process. Not only should you hunt for typos, but spend some time rolling each sentence around in your mouth. Does it feel clumsy? Can you clarify, rearrange or amalgamate? Do the words flow smoothly from one to the next? This really is important. A good piece of writing should slide seamlessly from one line to the next and, hopefully, be a pleasure to read.
That said, do remember: ignore the entirety of this blog post sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
