- Every scientific talk is a story.
Fundamentally, there's a beginning,
there's a middle, and an end of every scientific talk.
- A story arc is, you know,
basically the logical progression,
you know, it's really connecting
the individual pieces of your presentation,
the pieces in your introduction,
to the individual supporting pieces of data
in the body of your talk, to your ending.
It's all connecting things together
so that your audience can follow along
in a format that they recognize.
- Think about the elements of storytelling,
about showing a path of progress,
of struggle and overcoming struggle,
of excitement, of frustration,
and then an end goal, an end result, a destination.
- Start off with a bit of exposition.
And that's kind of what your introduction
and your background is,
you're sort of building the world
that you've done this work in.
You get to a question and a story
that would be like the inciting incident.
And then you have this rising action.
In your research, it's like we tried this
and that didn't work.
We thought it would be this, and then it wasn't.
And all of that builds up to a final moment,
that climax where something finally works,
something clicks, you've realized something.
And hopefully by the end, you get to this conclusion,
which is, you know, the resolution of your story.
Where hopefully the world that you built in the beginning
has changed in some way,
and you can describe why that has changed.
- The most important thing
is to remember that in a story, there are turning points.
So thinking about what are the turning points in your story,
and how can you use that to bring people along with you.
Maybe you got results that were totally unexpected,
that's a turning point.
Here's what I did next.
Here's where that took me.
- There's a sense out there
that some science stories are easier to tell than others
because of the subject matter.
Is if it's about cancer, it's about human health.
If it's about ecology, it's about saving the world
or beautiful animals or places.
- You don't need to be curing cancer
to have a fascinating story.
- So, you know, you're a first year graduate student.
You're just beginning to work on your dissertation project.
You start doing the experiment
and you get the result that you want from the get go.
And you're super excited about that.
You need to repeat that experiment.
And then the second time you repeat that experiment,
you don't get the same result.
So there's trouble.
You do the experiment again,
and it doesn't work, and you start to worry.
And then it turns out that there was something wrong
with your microscope, your microscope went to (bleep).
You work to fix that.
Your experiments start working again
and you get the result that you want.
Everyone is gonna be able to relate to that.
You know, they have an experiment down.
They only have to repeat it twice more
to get enough of an N, and then things go wrong.
- It's not something big and high flute moves,
and you're not supposed to take your talk
and somehow turn it into a Marvel movie.
Why are you so interested?
What's important for you?
What's important for the field?
What are the implications?
Convey that to me, that's your story.
- Story is universal.
It is something that human beings have been using
to convey and understand
and remember information for centuries.
- The best way most people relate to anything
is if it's in a story.
Everyone loves a drama.
Everyone loves a tragedy.
Everyone loves a little razzle dazzle with their science.
- What's really important to show is yes, the data,
but how you got that data.
There was a journey
and there was a story that went behind it.
And that's what captivates people,
that's what keeps them interested.
That's what keeps them watching and listening.
And that's what people really take home with them.
(light music)