Image by Çağlar Oskay from Unsplash
Kathryn Schulz’s article “The Really Big One” takes a fairly good story and turns it into an excellent one. Schulz presents us with an incredible hook, story organization, and call-to-action within this work. Together, we will go over all three and how they were achieved.
First, Schulz tells the story of Chris Goldfinger. This is where the story of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami is told through the lens of Goldfinger. We learned that Goldfinger was in the city of Kashiwa at an international meeting on seismology. It was there that everyone felt the earthquake and laughed since they are such a common occurrence in Japan. Goldfinger himself was thinking about food until the quake kept going without stopping. Then we read as Goldfinger realizes the danger the earthquake is as he watches on someone’s phone as a tsunami begins. It is in this story of Goldfinger that we are led by the hand into what appears to be a fun little story but end up being led instead into the horror of a national tragedy. This introduction into the article is an excellent way to hook readers into reading the entire thing, and lead into the focus of the article.
Second, we learn about the tectonic plates that lay under North America. This includes learning a bit about history and then the Ring of Fire. We learn about the Cascadia subduction zone, what makes tectonic plates, Juan de Fuca, the connection of geology and geography, and the Ring of Fire. Overall, this is where the main content of the article lays and is where most of the scientific talk resides. Like Schulz’s article, this is the best place to put the main scientific talk of your article, since it’s not right at the beginning where it may overwhelm starting readers or at the end where it may be too much of a departing mouthful. It leads perfectly into the article’s call-to-action portion of the article, after explaining the background behind the problem at hand.
Then, we return to Goldfinger and learn about lax safety measures across America in terms of earthquakes and the dangers that they pose. It is in this portion of the article that we learn of the dangers of future earthquakes due to many buildings across America being built without earthquake regulations. This ending portion, then, is where we are given the call-to-action of sorts from Kathryn Schulz. Not all science articles have a call-to-action, but many do. It is in the last portion of the article that the call-to-action is brought up and explained in more detail for those at home to read and understand.
To conclude, what are the three things Kathryn Schulz did to take her article from an alright story into an excellent one? First, she created a clear hook with an impactful ending. Second, she gave her scientific facts in a logical manner as the main portion of the article. Finally, she provided a clear call-to-action at the end of the article by presenting the dangers we are faced with in our present world. Together, Schulz wrote an incredible article.
Science Writings 