Workshop reports
Fact vs. fantasy—science writing meets science fiction
For communicating factual science, we’ve talked about using techniques from fiction. And we’ve workshopped fiction that’s intended to communicate about factual science. But is there a difference, actually, between writing nonfiction and fiction, and if so, what is it? And for that matter, is fiction really even fictional? We were surprised what some scientist-writers had…
Read MoreUsing ourselves as characters to guide audiences into science
Lecturing at an audience and just “explaining the science” isn’t always the most effective way to communicate. An alternative approach that’s often recommended is using a personal story to connect with an audience first. Even better, if a scientist or writer can present themselves as a relatable human being, they may have a better chance…
Read MoreWhat explains public distrust of science?
A concern frequently voiced by participants in our workshops is the decline of public trust in science. The need to rebuild trust, and strengthen public awareness of the scientific process, are oft-cited goals of science communication, including the kind of science-related creative writing we try to foster in NeuWrite Nordic. Yet how to solve the…
Read MoreGoing deep—getting the writer and reader immersed
What happens when, as we research and write, we take a really deep dive—especially into subject matter that might be outside our expertise, or into a complicated real-world situation, or even into the minds of the people we’re writing about? What ethical problems arise for us as writers? What writing techniques can we use? How…
Read MoreReaching resistant readers
How do you get your message to the audience that needs to hear it—especially if they are likely to resist? For that matter, as writers, how do we learn enough about our intended audience that we can meet them where they are? The author of one of the draft texts we workshopped this month faced…
Read MoreThe entanglement of subject and object
Sir Isaac Newton thought light consisted of particles, until Thomas Young’s famous “double-slit experiment”, believed to have been performed in 1801, suggested that light actually took the form of waves. But this wasn’t a simple case of “scientific progress”, where an old idea was replaced by a new one. As the philosopher of science Karen…
Read MoreThe shocking truth about scientific utopias
Scientists hate science. Or so it seemed when we read the judges’ comments and the winning stories in the EU-LIFE/Nature essay competition, which had been intended to encourage scientists to write speculative fiction about their ideal future—a scientific utopia. When the submissions flooded in, the judges were alarmed by what they received: What we [had]…
Read MoreWriting for kids makes us better science writers for adults
One of the senior scientists in our workshop group recently found himself in the impromptu situation of sitting down for a video interview about his complex research on mitochondrial diseases—but the interviewer was a child. The episode reminded us of the famous WIRED magazine video series “5 Levels”, in which “an expert scientist explains a…
Read MoreMedically and genetically engineered dystopias
Science fiction is an especially creative kind of science writing, one that can show us the present in imaginative and emotionally charged ways while also anticipating possible futures. Amidst hopeful talk of scientific and technological progress, science fiction can also reveal injustices, risks, and dystopian futures to correct or avoid. On the other hand, some…
Read MoreShould scientists express opinions? If so, how?
Among the top 100 most-influential scientists on Twitter—according to an early and somewhat controversial survey by Science way back in 2014—was Trish Greenhalgh (pictured). Today Greenhalgh is at Oxford, where she directs interdisciplinary research at the crossroads of social sciences and medicine. Since those early days of social media, when “sci-comm”—science communication—was exploding across Twitter…
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