By: Amy DeLaMare
In “The Really Big One,” Kathryn Schulz demonstrates three distinct ways writers can find, improve, and strengthen their own writings. With an object lesson, a tale worth investing in, and building urgency through creating personal relevancy, Schulz provides a master class in baiting your readers.
Schulz begins to walk the reader through a series of steps in a demonstrative object lesson, “Take your hands and hold them palms down, middle fingertips touching.” The reader’s hands are used to explain the mechanics of tectonic plates, how one hand collides with and slips above or under one another to mimic plate collisions which leads to earthquakes. This works on two fronts: first creating a physical (and memorable) way for the reader to engage with the material and, second, breaking down the “science” portion of the science writing to make it accessible and understandable to the average person. I wonder how I might be able to give my readers a fun or simple task to get them to further interact with my material.
“Close-up of a seismograph machine needle tracing seismic waves” Credit:bymuratdeniz
Another concrete thing to take away: write a story your reader wants to invest in. Schulz tells a tale of people attending a seismology conference at the time of, ironically, being hit with a major earth quake. The article starts light but it quickly shifts to urgency and unfortunate devastation. Schulz reveals the death of eighteen thousand people, the meltdown at the Fukushima power plant, and damages of roughly two hundred and twenty billion dollars.
The key to Schulz’s success is not only that the article has a tragic ending, investing the reader emotionally but that it also plays on other, lighter, emotions. This story is well told because it starts with almost a joke (the irony of an earthquake at that specific conference); before delving into something interesting, that eventually devolves into outright tragedy. As a writer, it’s important to take note of her ability to transform and manipulate the readers’ experience with the story you’re telling. Good writing guides you through a multitude of feelings and emotions.
Lastly, Schulz demonstrates the importance of making people care about your issue by making it something that impacts the reader. In this case, she took the feelings from the tragedy in Japan and suggested that a similar, or worse, catastrophe could happen in your own proverbial back yard. Consider how Schulz mentions “The Pacific Northwest sits squarely within the Ring of Fire.” Naming the Pacific Northwest localizes the issue more to a potential reader as the article was published in America. Ideally though, localizing the issue just illustrates that a natural disaster phenomenon can be super destructive; and that just because the earlier example happened in Japan doesn’t mean it can’t happen to you. She’s building both interest and urgency within the reader- it could happen to you.
Schulz employs several tactics to make the reader care about what she wrote because she forces them to invest in what they read. She does this well because she encourages further engagement with her piece. As a reader, you care about the tragedies, you feel compelled to do the object lesson, and you can’t help but walk away from it wanting to know more about earthquakes that might end up in your own literal back yard. My hope is to, as a writer, emulate her strengths and encourage my own readers to do exactly what hers did: invest.
Science Writings 