I picked up this book a few years back, when I was preparing to teach my Scientific Writing and Communication course at the University of Nebraska. I was immediately hooked on it, and have gained much in terms of story structure and setting up logical progression of ideas. Dr. Schimel distills his years of experience in writing for publications and grants, and advising students and postdocs as they learn to write in the genre into some very actionable advice.
I briefly considered using this book as a text for my class, but ruled it out because it is not conducive to the step-by-step process I teach, and because I feel that the key messages will be lost on beginners who don’t have enough experience to internalize the key lessons. This is not a knock on the book by any means, just a comment about audience appropriateness.
The first several chapters of the book are devoted to storytelling and how to set up logical arguments. This book was published in 2012, before the (seemingly) widespread push for storytelling in science and the scicomm movement took hold, making Schimel one of the first to bring this concept to scientific writers. Later chapters get into details of writing at the paragraph, sentence, and even at the word level. The final chapters deal with writer for broader audiences.
I found so much useful in this book that I can’t remember it all, and I come back to it every once in a while for a refresher. The writing is acessable, easy to read, and interesting. Although I mentioned earlier that I would not use this book as a textbook, I wouldn’t dissuade graduate students from reading it. I think it would be great material for a postdoc or faculty reading group or writing circle to work through the book over the course of a semester.
The photo to the left shows some of the notes I took the first time I read the book. All the flags are marking key elements that I thought were worth a second look.
Here is a link to buy this book.
Have you read Writing Science? What did you think? Do you have any other book suggestions? Leave a comment below!
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