What actually is ‘storytelling’ in educational social media?
To tell a story within the tight confines of social media, take your time! Plan for it, keep some key principles of storytelling in your mind, but above all try to be creative and treat each post like a lovingly-crafted short story.
‘Storytelling’ was a word dropped by almost every single person I interviewed over the course of my Fellowship. That’s no surprise: I was asking what the most important aspects of their online science content was, and it’s pretty obvious that telling great stories is crucial to engaging your audience: facts alone are rarely enough.
But what does it actually mean, in practise? ‘Tell stories’ is the first piece of advice we’re given when communicating science online, but that’s very rarely followed by any practical guidance on how to go about that, particularly on social media. The most important thing to getting this right? Give yourself the time to do it. Telling stories in very short packages is an art, and if you’re writing your posts in a minute or two before you dash to lunch, you won’t be doing it justice.
Very short stories
The limits on time and space imposed by platforms don’t mean you can’t tell great stories; you just have to be smarter with how you tell them. The key is to edit down your work brutally, and take extra time to get it right. A beautiful story can be told in just one image or a few words, but it takes care and effort.
If you doubt that, just take a look at these tiny, beautiful stories told on Twitter by @MicroSFF and @ASmallFiction.
Lanae Spruce and the team at the National Museum of African American History and Culture are particularly good at telling tales on twitter. See how this short thread (click to see all the tweets) tells a historical story with a bold image and striking caption, followed by more detail that paints a wide picture, and finally an invitation to learn more:
And this gif from NASA Goddard conveys years of work and progress, and a monumental journey, in just a few carefully combined images:
Speaking to the team at NASA Goddard, this gif took over a day to produce. Because our social posts are fleeting and brief, we tend to create them in fleeting, brief ways, and see them as just a vehicle to drive people to a longer story elsewhere. But telling a great story in a short space requires more, not less, time than when you have unlimited space to ramble into.
Sometimes it’s as simple as making sure there’s a clear narrative. This is a gif I produced for the British Society of Immunology. OK, it’s no literary masterpiece, but starting with a very simple story isn’t a bad place to start. (side tip: if you need a gif with a reasonable file size, but that’s quite long, keep colours to a minimum. This is longer and larger than most gifs, something that wouldn’t be possible with a complex animation)
Basic things to keep in mind
There are a few guiding principles that came up again and again. You might be thinking these literary techniques don’t really apply to your brief tweets and instagrams about some scientific concept, but if you keep them in the front of your mind, it’s surprising how applicable they can be. Some seem obvious and simple, but just going through the process of thinking about them will make your posts better. I promise! If in doubt, start with these:
Conflict and resolution: This was the most frequently cited approach, and is a reasonable starting point. Build some tension with some sort of problem or challenge, then resolve it. Simple.
And.. but… therefore: Jayde Lovell and Rebecca Gill produce ScIQ and run workshops on science storytelling. They swear by Randy Olsen’s ‘ABT’ method, and it’s a good, practical approach, particularly when you’re short on space. And: Set your story up — establish context and what’s at stake. But: introduce conflict and contradiction to engage the audience. Therefore: Conclude and discuss. Whenever possible in your post, replace the word ‘and’ with a ‘but’ or ‘therefore’. In doing so, you start to build a stories with conflicts and conclusions.
Story circle: Joseph Campbell’s classic ‘hero’s journey’ came up a lot too. Now, when you’re trying to apply the 17 stages of this to each tweet, you’ve probably taken this all a bit too far, and I’m pretty sceptical that anyone is really trying to crowbar their science pieces into this precise structure. But, the slightly more manageable ‘story circle’, championed by Dan Harmon (writer of Community and Rick & Morty), is worth appreciating. Luckily there’s a video that you walks you through it. If you can’t spare 15 minutes (which you should), the gist is that all stories follow the same path:
1) A character is in a zone of comfort, 2) but they want something. 3) They enter an unfamiliar situation, 4) adapt to it, 5) get what they wanted, 6) pay a heavy price for it, 7) then return to their familiar situation, 8) having changed.
Think about format and structure
Try to keep all the above in mind, and just consciously considering the storytelling aspect of your posts will make a huge difference. But above all, be creative. The single thing lacking in so much science-related social media — and brilliant when present — is wit and guile. Luke Groskin, Science Friday’s video producer, mentioned that most science storytelling follows the pattern of a science paper: Main finding mentioned first (abstract) then an introduction for context, methods, and conclusions. There’s nothing wrong with that , it’s a tried and tested formula, but he advocates going for something different. He tries to craft a creative story around a different hook. Take this video on nematodes — he models the video on approximating ‘Hotel California’, with nematodes as the residents.
Of all the approaches and tips people mentioned, this is the one I’d like to see embraced by the UK’s science content producers. Don’t forget the need for a solid narrative structure and flow of ideas, but find a unique take on the story or discovery, come at it from a different angle, and surprise people.
This post forms part of the publication, ‘Communicating Science with Social Media’, which is the product of a 2017 Winston Churchill Fellowship. Read more about the project here, and for more about me, including examples of my own work, visit anthony-lewis.com.
