Thread by @SfPRocur

How do you even start communicating science non-fiction stuff?!

I think there are 4 CORE ELEMENTS of a successful communication piece needs. And knowing those, starting to write / script / create your piece becomes much easier.

I am still @DennisEckmeier. If you missed my introdution earlier today, you can check it out here:

https://twitter.com/SfPRocur/status/1156126932607672321

Later this week I want to talk about the different formats of communication that I use:
- writing: academic articles, blog posts, twitter threads ;)
- speaking: giving talks in academia
- audio: podcasting
- video: webvideos

All these different ways to communicate of course have their own characteristics.
BUT! They also ALL bascially follow the same principles! And understanding this has greatly reduced my hesitance when preparing the next thing.

Disclaimer: I have NO Master's in #scicomm, or something. But I visited are large variety of workshops on these things as a postdoc, and also was taught by advisers as a PhD student - and, yes I watched way too many YouTube videos, too.

So, if you have a formal education in this, or are more experienced, or simply have a *different* experience, I am looking forward to your feedback! :)

There are questions that people think you need to carefully strategize about. For example, if you watch this introduction to scicomm series, @GregFoot will tell you to think deeply about target audience, and medium before anything else.
youtube.com/playlist?list=…

This is absolutely not how I personally came to scicomm. I had something to say, and I had a medium I wanted to try out. (well, except for academic communication, then those choices don't exist). But then, I don't really have a strategy. :P

My first real decisions are usually about content and structure. And you can think this through - to some degree - irrespective of the media you're planning to use.

Once you defined the (usually single) take-home message - deliverable in one brief sentence - you can flesh out the "skeleton" structure provided by what I think are the 4 core parts in communication:

1. The Hook is what catches the attention of the audience. It can be a brief story about how you became interested in the subject, or it can be simply posing a very interesting question or problem. Things like cover artwork and title are also part of the hook!

2. The Intro is a quick overview of what the audience is going to get. In many cases it will involve the establishment of expertise of the author/presenter.

3. The Content, obviously, is the in-depth delivery of the information you want to convey. Often it will be some sort of journey where pieces of knowledge are being build up to make the take-home message a logical conclusion.

4. The Outro will be a summary of the main stages of this "journey" and the explicit statement of the take-home message.

Knowing your central message and the structure, you can start writing a script for your podcast or video, prepare your power point or poster, or the first draft of your written piece.

I found that even scholarly research papers follow the exact same structure. Let's take the classic IMRaD paper (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion): How do you think it fits in the aforementioned structure?

Also, can you identify hook, intro, content, and outro in this thread?