The Write Stuff, by Prof. John Tregoning

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Prof. John Tregoning on how writing science for lay audiences strengthens writing for scientific ones

Communicating ideas is a central strand of research; the whole point of solving the mysteries of immunology is lost if you keep it a secret. Sharing ideas moves fields (and careers) forwards. We communicate these ideas through formal channels – papers and conference talks, but there are other routes – blogs, newspaper articles and books and for the truly adventurous there are podcasts, vlogging and even TikTok. All of which help you share your ideas to diverse audiences. Different people approach science in different ways, some people prefer grants thinking forwards as to what might happen, others (and I am one of this camp) prefer papers working retrospectively from experiments and weaving them into a narrative. Story-telling is central to my scientific process. I find the concrete nature of papers more satisfactory than the speculative nature of grants. This is what we did and what we found rather than this is what we might do and might find. Science writing for a lay audience is a somewhat natural progression from science writing for your peers. The key challenge remains the same – present information in a way that your audience will understand without you being there to explain it to them in person. Just as no paper will make it past peer review and no grant will be funded if the panel doesn’t get what you are trying to say, no story will be read if it doesn’t make sense. And yes sometimes it can feel like it is the reviewers are at fault – willfully misinterpreting your genius, either way you still end up at the same place, disappointment. When writing for a lay audience, there is just a different starting point in background knowledge – as strange as it may sound, most people don’t know the difference between Interferon alpha and beta or that combining p40 with p35 can give a completely different outcome to combining it with p19 (admittedly they should). Knowing that starting point can be a challenge, for both papers and books. Though there is accepted knowledge that you can assume. The more you experience you have, the easier it can be to gauge the acceptable common denominator. First year undergraduates, lacking confidence in their own knowledge, tend to over dumb down, explaining every concept from the T cell upwards. A similar thing is true for science comms, you begin to get a sense of what other people might (or might not) know. If you are new to science comms, a rule of thumb is to think what a 16 year old might understand. It certainly helped that when I wrote my first book: Infectious: pathogens and how we fight them (published by Oneworld during the COVID-19 pandemic), I literally had a captive audience. My son who was 16 at time and stuck inside because of lockdown measures, nothing more sinister than that! Having worked out the baseline, you then need to accelerate through your introductory material as fast as you can. There is a juggling act in bringing everyone along without patronising those already in the know (and if you know, you know) but without leaving anyone else behind. I visualise it a bit like a rollercoaster, you drop down to a low point but then rapidly accelerate to where you need to be. Two things that can help are to find obscure, related facts that most people (even experts in the field) won’t know to add depth and my not so secret weapon, dad jokes. Used properly jokes can help you land your messages. Some of it is because it makes the ideas more memorable. This is a big difference between writing for journals and books: the space for humour. It is very hard to drop a joke into a paper, trust me I’ve tried – the closest I’ve got is putting the phrase LION-taming into an article title (which admittedly isn’t comedy gold, even by my low standards). The freedom to include humour reflects a wider freedom of expression in writing – you are not tied to the strict norms of a paper and you don’t have to reference every statement. Books are also considerably longer, giving you more space to flesh out ideas, or add colour by going down rabbit holes. There is of course a balance, some rabbit holes are deeper than others and you do eventually need to return to the path. If you are feeling inspired to write, the next step is to put together a pitch. In my experience that involved an overview of the whole book, writing the first chapter in full, a 2-page summary of each of the other chapters, a writing CV and how your book is better than other books in the same space. The eagle eyed amongst you will spot that this isn’t massively different to a grant application. The pitch goes to an agent (think journal editor, with a similar desk rejection ratio as the big journals). If the agent likes it, they in turn pitch it to editors at publishing houses. Your agent and editor have a huge influence on your writing experience. Mine are both great, my editor Sam is a light touch guide rather than a line slashing pedant; even better he plays cricket! My agent Caroline sowed the seed for both of my books – with the immortal phrase: ‘have you thought about…’. But it is a very personal relationship and what works for me, might not work for others. Of course, writing a 90,000 word book is a daunting task. If it is something you are considering getting into, my first piece of advice would be to practice with shorter form writing first. There are lots of opportunities to write and failing all else, do what I did and set up your own blog (https://drtregoning.blogspot.com/). Even if no one else reads it, having a portfolio of work that can be accessed by prospective agents or commissioning editors is really important. The second thing is to break the writing into smaller chunks – the old adage that every journey begins with a single step applies here. The experience of writing a PhD thesis also helps – at first it feels insurmountable, but over time, the masterpiece emerges. I find it helps to have some kind of tracker – words written vs words required (I imagine it like a cricket run chase). Though a word of warning, it is possible to spend so much time setting up the perfect spreadsheet telling you whether or not you are on track, that you fall hopelessly off track. The final piece of advice is to just do it. No one is ever going to read your words if they are locked inside your head. Get the words onto the page and then subsequently worry if they are the right ones. In the end it has been extremely rewarding – not least because I got to fan boy out over other authors who I have always wanted to meet. So, if you ever find yourself housebound due to a once in a lifetime (hopefully) viral outbreak – consider writing as a way to break those lockdown blues.