Using comedy in science comms
And how are comedies similar in structure to science articles?
First, a bit of housekeeping: If you haven’t seen it already already, pop over to the Word Count newsletter for an update on my trip up to York for the Artivism: Imagining Anthropocene Futures workshop the week before last. I know a lot of you are subscribed to Word Count so I won’t repeat myself here!
Now then…
What did the award-winning ecologist, geologist and archeologist have in common?
They were all out standing in their field.
Sorry. Not sorry.
Everyone loves a laugh. It’s a fundamental part of being human. People laugh when they are relaxed, when they feel safe amongst friends and peers, when they are open to new ideas and to being surprised. Which is exactly how you want an audience to feel when you’re trying to communicate something serious.
Many people’s experience of science, though, is quite dry. It’s earnest documentaries on TV. Doom-laden or overexcited newspaper headlines. Memories of impenetrable lessons at school. Science is a serious thing, no room for frivolities here.
But what if science communication could be funny?
Perhaps not all science communications. We probably don’t want to hear about the next global pandemic through the medium of stand-up comedy. But, in the right place and at the right time, comedy can help lower barriers and enable people to take in new information, perhaps even information that contradicts what they think they know.
A whole book could be written on why and how a little bit of humour can make science communication more accessible, more digestible and more alluring to a non-science audience, but this newsletter isn’t that. (If you are interested in that, scroll to the bottom.) Mostly because I can’t help thinking that science writers are halfway there already. There are a lot of similarities between comedy and science communications, the latter just needs a few more gags*.
1. Stakes
In comedy, characters need to have something at stake. We need to know, up front, why they are doing what they are doing, what they hope to achieve by doing it, and how they will suffer if they fail. In short, we need to know why we should care about them.
In sci-comms, the reader also needs to know why they should care about the story. A friend of mine who used to teach journalism calls this the ‘FMD’ or ‘Fuck me, Doris’ – that little nugget of information that makes someone say, ‘Well, fuck me, Doris, I did not know that’.
2. The inverted pyramid
In comedy, you should probably put all your best jokes in the first few minutes, in case people stop paying attention. And, let’s face it, if they don’t find your work funny within the first few minutes, they absolutely will stop paying attention.
In a lot of sci-comms news stories, you use the inverted pyramid structure, putting the most important information first in case someone stops reading. This structure perhaps started due to the cost of filing news stories by telegraph, or out of a fear that the wires might be cut before the full story was transmitted, or to make it easier for editors to cut for length. Whatever its origins, it’s still a key structure that ensures readers get a good solid dose of facts before they look away.
Feature articles have a bit more leeway, so you’ll often see a writer set the scene or start with an anecdote before getting into the meat of the story, but even they need to give you enough of the important info up front to make sure you understand why you should carry on reading.
3. Momentum
In comedy, every scene should advance the story in some way. If you can’t explain what a scene is doing or why it’s there, you need to cut it.
In sci-comms, every paragraph should advance the story in some way. If you can’t explain what a paragraph is doing or why it’s there, you need to cut it. Yes, even in a feature article.
4. Structure
A comedy is someone trying to get something and repeatedly failing. Everything they do to reach their goal makes the situation worse and worse until, eventually, they manage to reset their situation and wind up roughly where they were when they started. Without that structure, it all gets a bit messy and confusing, and confusion is the enemy of comedy.
A sci-comms article also has to build, each section adding more information, explanation, or context. It has to have a logical structure so that the reader can easily follow the argument. Without that structure, it all gets a bit messy and confusing, and confusion is the enemy of understanding.
5. Sticking the landing
Landings are the hardest part of any creative project, comedy, sci-comms or anything else.
A comedy needs to end hilariously. In a sitcom, nothing really changes and the characters can start the next episode as if nothing happened. In a comedy drama, characters need to have made enough, but not too much, progress along their character arc. In both formats, we need to believe that they will fuck up again, in exactly the same way, next week.
A sci-comms piece needs to end with the reader having a very clear understanding of what they’ve just read, some sense of the implications going forward, and a feeling of satisfaction. Yes, even news pieces.
It’s hard to say exactly how you get that latter bit of the jigsaw in the right place, and I have agonised over endings throughout my entire writing career. Sometimes it’s just a matter of getting the right turn of phrase in the right spot. Sometimes it’s about getting all the set-ups in the right place earlier on. Sometimes it’s about not actually killing the character you were thinking of killing, because that would be mean and he really didn’t deserve it.
With sci-comms and comedy already so close together, it makes sense for science communicators to think about how they can, for the right stories, work a bit of comedy in to help their audience connect with the subject. A little lightheartedness can help the lightbulb go on in the reader’s mind, so surely it’s worth gaining a deeper appreciation for comedy.
This should be the moment I recommend reading Joel Morris’s excellent Be Funny Or Die, but sadly that got caught up in the Unbound bankruptcy debacle. So please do buy it, but only once it’s out in paperback or ebook, so that Joel actually gets the royalties he’s earnt.
Meanwhile, if you are interested in how comedy helps communications, why not take a look at the Comedy and Communication panel discussion that I organised for International Women’s Day back in 2021. Featuring comedy and science writer Dr Helen Pilcher, maths teacher Susan Okereke, comedian and science comedy producer Kyle Marian Viterbo, and biologist and science communicator Dr Sally Le Page, this hour-long discussion is a fascinating insight into how comedic science communicators think and why comedy is so useful in sci-comms.
* Gags are, by the way, the hardest part.