Nearly anyone who enjoys writing or reading good science writing knows there are a few tricks of the trade used to interest readers and motivate them to go from one sentence to the next. One technique I’ve heard about – and have used in Life Traces of the Georgia Coast, as well as my upcoming book Dinosaurs Without Bones – is the “sensory” one.
In this method, the writer refers to stimuli that connect with one, several, or all of the human senses in the narrative. Sometimes the inclusion of more than one sense is tough to do in science writing, especially if the science is being conducted in a lab. Yet it works very well with reporting natural history in the field, in which the writer experiences sights, sounds, smells, touch, and sometimes even taste while outside, and in less controlled circumstances.
Never mind the appearance of these alligator tracks and tail dragmark, and fiddler-crab burrows and feeding pellets. How do they sound?
I see writing as a continual exercise in which I will keep learning by doing it and honing it (with a recent instance of that here). My wife Ruth also recognizes this quality in me, and was thoughtful enough to give me a book related to this goal: Steering the Craft(1998) by famed author and poet Ursula Le Guin. What I love about this book is that Le Guin does not just dole out writing advice, but does it succinctly (thus leading by example), with good humor, and most importantly, puts theory into practice with writing exercises at the end of each chapter.
The first writing exercise dealt with sounds, and how language – even when written – should pay attention to it sounds. Here were her instructions:
BEING GORGEOUS: Write a paragraph to a page (150-300 words) or narrative that’s meant to be read aloud. Use onomatopoeia, alliteration, repetition, rhythmic effects, made-up words or names, dialect – any kind of sound-effect you like – but NOT rhyme or meter.
So just to make it easy on myself with this first writing assignment, I picked an ichnologically based example, and one I had blogged about just last month, Erasing the Tracks of a Monster. I originally wrote about this topic from the perspective as a field scientist reporting some very cool (to me) observations in the field, and didn’t really enrich the writing beyond that.
Thus for Le Guin’s exercise, the following came out of me, and it sure was was different from how i wrote about the same phenomena a few weeks before. In writing this, I asked myself: How do traces sound? So I hope you enjoy it, and if you did, read it aloud with gusto for maximum effect.
The Daily Terror
An alligator ambling along with ankles all akimbo
Plopping scaley feet on sloppy mud, then pulling them up
Moist resistance, a sucking sound that pops with each step.
Tail, big and keeled, flopping from one side to another
Dragging on its side, scraping along, swathing its way
Then hup-two, back up again, a ship righting itself on land.
Fiddler crabs scramble and scurry, getting out of his wake
A monster invader, Godzilla incarnate, legendary vengeance
Claws are waved, then tucked against carapaces, recoiling in fear.
Hiding in burrows, the thunder rumbles overhead on a ground
Trembling with the motion of the oblivious and massive reptilian
Locomotive with an unheeding mind, while mindless of their plights.
Homes are squashed, a few fiddlers too, destruction and chaos
However, quickly passes, and then slow, like molasses, they return
Burrowing, gathering, mating, breathing, exoskeletons dancing.
The TICKTACKULAR returns to their village each time the tide subsides
Its prowling rejecting their presence and bringing them no presents
Good thing for them that instinctual cowering is so ephemeral.
[Appreciative clicking of fingers from the audience, a clacking of jaws from the alligators present, and the quick staccato tapping of pointed feet from the fiddler crabs on the wooden floor.]
Writing is a process, and if you do it long enough, you produce. But knowing that the “process” part of that simple equation requires constant tuning – whether through expert feedback, writing exercises, editing, or other standard tools of the trade – it also means having to climb out of ruts and onto the high ground above the ruts, looking down, and saying, “Wow, those sure are deep ruts.” Then sometimes you jump back in, because it may be a rut, but it’s the rut you know and love. However, in other instances, you gain a new perspective and become aware of some new dimension that could be added to your writing that takes it in a slightly different direction: a side trail off the main one where you left your mark, so to speak.
Here’s an ichnological metaphor, depicting what can happen with your writing. This is a raccoon trail cutting through a high marsh on Wassaw Island, Georgia. See those other trails branching away from the main one in the background? Do you also notice how the main trail has a pile of raccoon crap lying on it (lower right)? I know: it writes itself, doesn’t it?
This happened to me a little over two weeks ago when I signed up for and attended a science-writing workshop held just before the start of the AJC-Decatur Book Festival in Decatur, Georgia (which I wrote about here). Titled Science Storytelling: Writing for a Chemical Reaction, and taught by local science writer and reporter Sonya Collins, it was a real writing workshop, one in which its participants actually wrote. (I’ve heard anecdotes from other writers about “workshops” that mostly consist of the authors/workshop organizers talking authoritatively about their own writing and generally promoting themselves to a captive audience, where the only work is enduring excessive self-aggrandizing. No thanks.) It was a fine, concise, and imminently practical two-hour workshop on science writing, and if offered again, I urge anyone in the Atlanta area who is interested to take it.
Why did I feel the need to attend a science-writing workshop when I’m already writing about science, and doing a lot of it? For example, earlier that week I had just finished and sent the first draft of a book manuscript, Dinosaurs Without Bones, and was feeling pretty darned good about having completed that major writing goal. Moreover, I was also being recognized as an author at the book festival, and in my own home town of Decatur. In one instance, I was given the honor of introducing fellow paleontologist-author Brian Switek (who gave a expertly delivered and enthused talk about his most recent book, My Beloved Brontosaurus, to an appreciative crowd co-sponsored by the Atlanta Science Tavern) and in another I talked with an audience about my most recent book, Life Traces of the Georgia Coast. I was on a science-author role, and instead of attending a workshop, I should have just been sitting back with my favorite adult beverage and toasting my greatness, entertaining thoughts of creating my own science-writing workshops in which I would talk to aspiring science authors about my favorite subject: you know, me.
Yet I still sometimes suffer from “imposter syndrome,” feeling like a fraud. Much of this insecurity stems from how much of what I know about science writing is intuitive, garnered largely through having written much of my life, but also through seeking out and reading good science writing. Otherwise, although I’ve had plenty of training in and practice with technical writing, I’ve had very little formal instruction and guidance in writing about science for a popular audience. Hence it was time for a reality check, and to see whether what I was doing was OK (jump back into that rut!) or whether I needed to tweak my writing in some way (make a new path out of the rut!). In other words, I still have a helluva lot to learn about science writing.
So how did it go? In short, I learned lots, but here was the one key insight I took away from the workshop: character development. I had not fully appreciated how science storytelling, like all other storytelling, requires an interesting cast of characters. But this presents a challenge; after all, one of my most frequent answers I give to people who ask if I ever write about human traces and behavior is the Ace Ventura line, “I don’t do humans!”
After all, I mostly write about non-human characters – animals and plants – and their tracks, burrows, nests, droppings, and other traces. How could those be characters, infused with their own personalities and figure into plots filled with conflict, drama, love, hilarity, tension, and resolution?
That’s when it hit me that the Georgia barrier islands host a proverbial cast of thousands worthy of an epic tragicomedy straight out of a Flannery O’Connor tale or a Coen brothers’ film. For example, look at the following common names of these plants and imagine them as characters – heroes, villains, lovers, siblings, and innocent (or not-so-innocent) bystanders – in a Southern Gothic story. Go ahead, anthropomorphize to your heart’s content, and read them aloud if so inclined:
Loblolly Pine
Yaupon Holly
Resurrection Fern
Smooth Cordgrass
Sea-oxeye Daisy
Bitter Panic Grass
Red Cedar
Black Needle Rush
Glasswort
Fiddle-leaf Morning Glory
And now for some of the inveterate, I mean, invertebrate characters:
Live-oak Stump Borer
Acrobat Ant
Bald-faced Hornet
Periodical Cicada
Cicada killer
Florida Harvester Ant
Mole crayfish
Southern Devil Scorpion
Southern Carpenter Bee
Fallen Angelwing
Silky Ribbon Worm
Thick-lipped Oyster Drill
Blood Brittle Star
Wood Gribble
Moon Snail
Ghost Crab
Hairy Hermit Crab
Sea Onion Anemone
Trumpet Worm
Baby’s Ear
Stout Razor Clam
Lightning whelk
Need some backbone to your story? How about these:
Congo Eel
Southern Short-tailed Shrew
Great Horned Owl
Spadefoot Toad
Belted Kingfisher
Tarpon Snook
Six-lined Racer
Nine-banded Armadillo
Chicken Turtle
Mottled Mojarra
Warmouth
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Wild Turkey
Bank Swallow
Northern Fence Lizard
Peninsular Ribbon Snake
Ruddy Turnstone
Sandbar Shark
Star-nosed Mole
Southern Stingray
Laughing Gull
Short-billed Dowitcher
Yellow-crowned Night Heron
Double-crested Cormorant
Boat-tailed Grackle
Marbled godwit
When you read such names, don’t you wonder a little bit about them, their secret lives, how they relate to one another, and how their pasts will collide in an uncertain future? And even if you’re a cool-headed, mechanistic materialist who only views animals and plants as vehicles for propagating genes, you might at least inquire about the varied behaviors of these living beings and what marks they leave on the world as a result. Either way, if you are curious, then I guess you’ll have to read my book. (Incidentally, an excerpt from the first chapter is free here, andintroduces one of the previously mentioned characters, who becomes the prime suspect in a murder-mystery.)
Like any good scientist, I had to experiment with this possible creative breakthrough. As a result, I read an abbreviated list of these characters in my presentation about Life Traces of the Georgia Coast at the AJC-Decatur Book Fesitval, and as far as I could tell, the audience reaction varied from mildly amused to confused. Still, it was well worth getting off an established trail and trying something new, and gave me a new question to ask when doing any future science writing: who are the subjects of my stories, and why should other people find them interesting? So be looking for some of them in upcoming stories about the life traces of the Georgia coast and the characters who make them.
Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Sonya Collins for putting together such a fulfilling and affirming science-writing workshop; to the AJC-Decatur Book Festival for arranging and encouraging such workshops; to the Atlanta Science Tavern for their continued support of science authors and writing; Brian Switek for lucidly and honestly discussing science writing with me during his too-short visit to my home town; and to my wife Ruth Schowalter, who puts up with the character who is me, writing about science.)
Never mind the appearance of these alligator tracks and tail dragmark, and fiddler-crab burrows and feeding pellets. How do they sound?