What distinguishes a good presentation from a bad presentation? What turns a good presentation into a great one? Effective oral communication is a vital (but sometimes underemphasized) component of scientific training. Your research may be truly fascinating, but even the most enthralling subject can seem uninteresting when communicated poorly. How can we ensure that we do justice to our work when presenting it to others? 

The answer is simple, though the execution takes practice: tell a good story. 

It might seem counterintuitive to use storytelling to present a scientific topic—isn’t science all about experiments and data glued together by technical jargon? While this is true to some extent, it does not have to be presented that way. In fact, I am adamant that it should never be presented like that, even to an audience of like-minded peers. 

The reality is few people will be as captivated as you are by the minutia of every experiment you’ve performed and every piece of data you’ve analyzed. Whether you’re presenting to a team of fellow scientists or a classroom of second graders, your audience will be interested in the major plot points: what are you doing, why are you doing it, why should I care? 

Scientists and communicators of science can learn a great deal from the principles of good storytelling:

1. Establish a clear purpose. 

What are you trying to accomplish through your presentation? In general, this will depend on the occasion for which you are presenting. Are you providing a project update, speaking at a conference, pitching a proposal, or taking part in an outreach event? Each of these purposes calls for a distinct approach to content and style. Designing visual aids without a clearly defined purpose can produce content lacking a logical flow or cohesive narrative, and it may generate a lot of extraneous information that buries the lead. 

2. Know your audience. 

Customizing your content for a specific audience is closely related to the purpose of your presentation: the purpose of your talk is shaped to some extent by who is receiving the information. Delivering a project update to an internal team of peers may warrant finer details and a close-up view of your research activities, while speaking at a conference will prompt a higher-level overview. Audiences at youth outreach events typically benefit most from a bird’s eye view, the intent being to inspire younger generations with a compelling glimpse into the adventures of scientific research. Meanwhile, public-service-oriented outreach may focus primarily on providing perspective for folks with little experience or knowledge of the ways science affects everyday life, so the content should be tailored to leave a strong impression of personal relevance and practical application.  

3. Identify the beginning, middle, and end. 

One piece of advice for extemporaneous public speaking is to prepare by deciding how you’ll open and close your speech—obviously you need to know how to start, but equally important is knowing how you want to end, otherwise you run the risk of rambling too long, ending too abruptly, or not connecting the conclusion to the introduction. The same principle applies for telling a research story. Your introduction sets the stage for the rest of the talk, and the conclusion leaves your audience with an overall impression; starting and ending strong are equally important. 

The beginning should supply relevant background information and justification for the work, and then transition to the main content by clearly framing the fundamental question that your research aims to answer. The middle should highlight key experiments and results (not exhaustively report everything you’ve done in the lab!) that illustrate your exploration of the scientific inquiry. Finally, the ending should establish a tangible connection to the beginning by revealing your answer to the research question (or explaining why the answer remains elusive), clearly stating the implications and significance of the conclusions (what they mean and why they are important). 

4. Keep it simple. 

It can be tempting to report your research in the most technical, jargon-laden fashion to “impress” your audience. In reality, this approach usually has the opposite effect. Overly complicated, data-dense presentations often fail to convey the significance and implications of your work and leave your audience uninterested and unconvinced by any arguments you’ve made. Merely reciting data and technical terms without explanation might also imply that you don’t truly understand what you’re doing; Albert Einstein famously said, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” If you adjust your communication style so that it’s accessible to a broad, diverse audience, you demonstrate that you have a depth of knowledge and thorough grasp of your content.  

5. Engage emotions. 

The best stories speak to the emotional center of our human nature. That’s not to say that a research presentation must have emotional content, rather the way it’s presented should provoke an emotional response. Incorporating bits of humor, displaying enthusiasm, and [appropriately] acknowledging frustration or disappointment can effectively engage your audience and help them resonate with your story to a greater extent. While scientific research should be unbiased and objective, it doesn’t have to be dispassionate. The same goes for science communication. Your credibility is not threatened by communicating with passion or enthusiasm, and your audience will feel more connected to you and to your work. 

These principles don’t just apply to formal presentations; casual conversations can benefit, too.

As an organic chemist, my answer to “what do you [for work]?” is often met with responses like, “Wow, I hated chemistry in high school/college!” and “Chemistry is so complicated; I could never do it!”, so I’ve learned first-hand how critical it is to communicate my research in a way that dispels or at least mitigates these negative connotations. Whether you’re putting together a formal research presentation or chatting with a friend, try using the art of storytelling. It will not only do better justice to your work but can help to make science more accessible (and hopefully more enjoyable!) for everyone.