Tell me the story!

It's marking season at the moment, and so now, more than ever, do I appreciate one of the big pluses of this job - I get to read work that is analytical, intellectually substantial, and not about something I lectured on a couple of weeks ago. Generally, what I'm reading is on a subject I know little to nothing about. But if the writer tells me a story about their subject, then I'm hooked.

What do I mean by telling a story? All academic writing contains some kind of narrative, even if it is as simple as 'we thought this, so we did that, which made that happen'. Telling the story, to me, means using those narrative elements to convey your interest and passion for the subject with the reader. Use an active voice. Use clear and simple language. Don't be afraid to put in the people, the drama, the humour, the fascination. 

In my chapter three, which is lurking at home waiting for some rewriting later tonight, there are lots of little stories that I want to include: the six-month argument in the letter pages of Astounding Science Fiction over the scientific credibility of Lemuria culminating in a satirical short story with a punchline involving suckerfish; the struggle by science fiction magazines to survive the Great Depression, from altering print schedules and the grade of paper to running stories that fantacised about hidden gold mines; the invention of synethetic tapioca (why? why?). Some of these stories are a footnote, others a paragraph, others a section. But they all jigsaw together to hopefully pull the reader through another story - the larger story of my thesis argument.