Some tips to improve your storytelling abilities when communicating to a general audience about your discoveries
Headline: Keep it short: 5-6 words. It should get my attention and tell me the big idea.
Lead: You’ve got two or three sentences here to give the focus of the story in a nutshell and make me want more.
Writing a lead: What’s so important about a lead? Well, the first few sentences of your story do most of the work: they ‘hook’ the reader and act as a roadmap for everything that follows.
Formulating a good lead is the hardest part of writing. But if you pull it off, it will protect you from getting distracted and focus your story.
Anecdotal: Start small with a slice of a story that gives me some specific insight into the bigger picture.
Scene-setting: Describes the physical location where a story takes place. This might be difficult to do well because including superfluous or irrelevant details feels amateur and will annoy the reader, but a good scene description should intrigue and set the stage.
Zinger: Shocking, funny, or weird leads are great for grabbing attention. But be sure to follow them up with evidence and facts.
Question: Leading with a question is sometimes an effective way to spark a conversation. But for the most part, readers don’t want to be asked questions – they want answers.
Lead with emotion: the human element – tears, struggles, drama –keeps the reader’s interest and drives the story. Feature stories need feelings.
Use data with caution: numbers convince people. Find experts: get people who know the most about your subject to weigh in.
Be multimedia: get everything you can: pictures, audio, video. Think about how to tell your story both in print and on social media.
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