Writing Well About Science: Techniques From Teachers of Science Writing

1. Read your work out loud. You will be able to hear rhythm and flow of language this way, and you really cannot hear it when reading silently. 2. Don't be shy. Ask other writers to read a draft for you. Everyone gets too close to the story to see the glitches, and a dispassionate reader is a writer's best friend. Good writers gather readers around them for everything from newspaper stories to whole books (which require really good friends). 3. Think of your lead as seduction. How are you going to get this wary, perhaps uninterested reader, upstairs to see your etchings? You need to begin your story in a way that pulls the reader in. My favorite basic approach goes seductive lead, so-what section (why am I reading this), map section (here are the main points that will follow in this story). That approach leads me to my next tip, which is 4. Have a dear sense of your story and its structure before you begin writing. If you think of a story as an arc, in the shape of a rainbow, then it's helpful to know where it will begin and where it will end so that you know in advance how to build that arc. 5. Use transitions. A story has to flow. Leaping from place to place like a waterstrider on a pond will not make your prose easy to follow. 6. Use analogies. They are a beautiful way to make science vivid and real—as long as you don't overuse them. 7. In fact, don't overwrite at all. And never, never, never use clichés. If you want to write in your voice, generic language will not do. In my class, there are no silver linings, no cats let out of bags, no nights as black as pitch. A student who uses three clichés in a story gets an automatic C from me. 8. Write in English. This applies not only to science writing but to all beats in which a good story can easily sink in a sea of jargon.