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Ideas into Words This page intentionally left blank Mastering the Craft of Science WritingintowordsideasElise HancockForeword by Robert KanigelTHE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESSBaltimore & London For my father,who would have been so proud. This page intentionally left blank ContentsForeword, by Robert Kanigel ixAcknowledgments xvii1. A Matter of Attitude12. Finding Stories293. Finding Out: Research and the Interview454. Writing: Getting Started and the Structure695. Writing: The Nitty Gritty956. Refining Your Draft1117. When You’re Feeling Stuck129Afterword145Index147 ©2003 The Johns Hopkins University PressForeword © 2003 Robert KanigelAll rights reserved. Published 2003Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper987654321The Johns Hopkins University Press2715 North Charles StreetBaltimore, Maryland 21218-4363www.press.jhu.eduLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataHancock, Elise.Ideas into words: mastering the craft of science writing / Elise Hancock.p. cm.ISBN 0-8018-7329-0 — ISBN 0-8018-7330-41. Technical writing. I. Title.T11 .H255 2003808′.0665—dc21 2002011065A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. This page intentionally left blank As I stepped into her office, I found Elise in her deskchair, bent over a page of manuscript rolled up into hertypewriter. She didn’t look up. She never looked up. Just ayear or two earlier, that would still have infuriated me. So-cial graces, Elise? Remember those? But by now I was long pastthe point where I paid it any mind. So I sat and waitedwhile she finished.Finally, she pulled out the page, gathered it togetherwith one or two others and, still not looking up, passedthem to me. It was a short essay for the Johns Hopkins Maga-zine, which she edited, but this was one of the little piecesshe wrote herself. What, she wanted to know, did I thinkof it?Oh, it was fine, I too quickly said after reading it, thenpaused. I was a freelance writer, of the perpetually strug-gling sort, had done some assignments for Elise, andsought others. Elise was just a few years into her thirties,but enough older than me to seem more seasoned andmature. She was unusually tall, and a little forbidding.Actually, a lot forbidding: Genuine smiles came easilyenough to her, but routine, social smiles—the kind thatleave everyone in a room feeling relaxed and happy—didnot. On this stern-faced woman and her opinion of mywork, my livelihood depended. And now she wanted myopinion of something she’d written?Umm, maybe, I ventured, there was just a little troublewith this transition? And this word, here, perhaps itwasn’t exactly what she meant?Elise took back the manuscript and looked at it, hard,the way she always did—no knitted brows, just the blank screen of her face, the outside world absent. For a moment, the room lay still. Until, abruptly: “Oh, yes,Foreword [...]... he’s got the theory all worked out. Ideas into Words 16 Mastering the Craft of Science Writing into words ideas Elise Hancock Foreword by Robert Kanigel THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS Baltimore & London one To write nonfiction, whether science writing or any other kind, is an act of intimacy.You are inviting the reader into your world into your mind, no less. As your close companion, the reader... sees how the picture has to be.And that night he crouches at the kitchen table till dawn, working out his new equation. The sky and basket join, and the leaves turn out to fill the basket. The innies and outies fairly fly together. I calculated all kinds of things with this theory. The first thing I calculated was the rate of disintegration of the muon and the neutron. They should be connected to- gether,... in the pages of this book. I speak now not of such matters of common sense and good profes- sional practice as double-checking names, though these count, too. But rather of a rich sensibility of respect. For lan- guage. For ideas. For people. For the surprising and the deli- ciously weird in us all. And most of all, respect for the world, the endlessly enthralling “real” world outside us. Elise is the. .. acupuncturists, housewives, and collec- tors of kewpie dolls, snuff bottles, or Civil War memorabilia, A Matter of Attitude 21 The passage begins as three of Feynman’s colleagues at the California Institute of Technology tell him that the evidence “is so mixed up that even some of the things they’ve estab- lished for years are being questioned—such as the beta decay of the neutron is S and T. It’s so messed... of state, all the people who will determine the future of our world. Just think: As a science writer, you will have a license to go find something new and interesting about how the world works, and then another something, and another, and an- other. For the rest of your working life, you will get paid to talk to people and pass along the great stuff you find— which can make a difference in the world. I... to say, then watch while it flows out your fingers and takes shape on the page. Then you refine it, and that’s all there is.You are now a writer, whether or not that’s how you make your living. Ideas into Words 28 They simply feel they have to know—as do scientists, in a more focused way. This affinity is one reason that I believe you will find it easy to work with scientists. The other is that the two... share the alien cadences of your thought. He will borrow your vocabulary, no doubt of a flavor not quite his own. He will be at the mercy of your skills to see, to hear, to think and feel, to assess people and draw them out, to persist until you re- ally know—and, of course, to put what you know into words. It requires a certain trust, to be a reader. Once the words are in print, however, it’s the writer who... accidental or random. Good writ- ers always have the reader in mind, not only as they write but also in the finding out that comes before. They do their research with integrity, digging deep, and they write with the same care. They connect as deeply with the ma- A Matter of Attitude Only connect. —E. M. Forster, Howards End admit the thought. Just don’t go there. Instead, tell yourself, “I am a beginner... have more time, or when they have their study fixed up, or when they get a new computer, or when they can afford to go back to school, or after the precession of the equinoxes, or some- thing. When I was still an editor, a few would even say they’d get started when they had an assignment, then look at me with bright-eyed expectancy. Even as party chitchat, these statements seem odd. These same people would... start. In the same way, you could train yourself to write in your local coffee shop, away from all the distractions of your home. All that said, do not fuss over your of ce instead of writ- ing. Write. That is so important, I’ll say it again: Above all,WRITE. Writing is what writers do. At parties, people often tell me that they have decided they want to be writers, and they’ll get started as soon as they . Ideas into Words This page intentionally left blank Mastering the Craft of Science WritingintowordsideasElise HancockForeword by Robert KanigelTHE. interest in it .Science writers and editors needn’t start off knowingmuch science. Some of the best of them do, but some of thebest of them don’t. They must,