Crackle and Fizz

Essential Communication and Pitching Skills for Scientists

This is a book for scientists and other experts who need to explain the significance and potential of their work to colleagues, committees, funding bodies or the general public. It details how to harness story-telling principles to make complex or technical content easier to communicate and fulfilling for audiences.

Eight narrative ingredients, Audience, Change and Affect, Lure, World, Character, Big Hook, Plot and Structure, are illustrated with examples and exercises to demonstrate how to build a presentation, how to pitch for funds or resources, how to make a persuasive argument, or simply how to explain ideas so they CRACKLE and FIZZ for the Audience.

Contents:

• Your Audience: The Person or People Whose Full Engagement You Need
• Change and Affect: Gives Communication Its Meaning and Impact
• Lure: An Enticement, Usually with a Bait, Offering the Promise of a Reward
• World: The Contextual Space in Which Your Narrative will Unfold
• Character: You! — The Audience's Guide, in Search of a Prize
• Big Hook: A Puzzle Which Drives the Narrative
• Plot: The Perilous Journey to Solve the Puzzle and Reach the Prize
• Structure: Making the Whole More Than the Sum of Its Parts
• Make Your Pitch CRACKLE: How to Persuade, to Win Support

Readership: Research scientists across all fields of science, from engineers to historians of science.
Key Features:

• This book helps researchers where they routinely struggle: communicating their specialist knowledge. It does so by challenging, guiding, and inspiring them to consider their content, not just as facts to be imparted, but as a narrative to impress audiences and funding bodies with the value of their work
• The author is a former BBC science producer who has coached hundreds of PhDs and career scientists to become profoundly better communicators by using the narrative principles which are outlined in this book
• The narrative principles outlined in this book can be applied to all forms of effective communication, from posters to papers, and grant proposals to presentations
• Includes a Foreword by Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell FRS (VC and President of Manchester University)