3. Bring your learning to life with stories
Telling stories is another way to breathe life into your writing.
Here’s Sverdrup-Thygeson on a beetle who goes house-hunting:
“When the insect mum is house hunting in the forest, her priorities are different from those of us humans. Take beetles that live in dead trees, for example; whereas we fear damp damage and rot, beetles think they’re fantastic because they like a fridgeful of food for the family’s greedy kids.
So, Mrs Beetle goes for a viewing. Softly, she sets down all six legs on the dead tree. With antennae and toes, she tastes and smells the spot where she’s landed to see if it will make a good nursery for her beetle babies. If she’s satisfied, she swiftly lays her eggs in a little crack in the bark and moves on (…)”
That’s interesting, eh?
A story is a sequence of actions told with a specific purpose, and brought to life with specific details. Here, the purpose of the story is to let us imagine what a beetle life is like so we can appreciate the similarities and differences with human life.
The actions are what the beetle mother does to find a nursery for her eggs. She goes for a viewing, she sets down her legs, she tastes and smells where she landed, she lays her eggs.
These actions help us imagine the beetle mother’s life and they add a tiny bit of drama, as we become curious to see what she’ll do next.
4. Paint colour with your words
Once you start adding examples and telling stories, it becomes easier to create a sensory experience, too.
When you need a sensory description, your brain acts almost as if you taste that sweet dollop of jam, as if you smell that damp earth.
Our author lets us experience the life of insects in ancient oak trees:
“Here, it is dim but not quite dark. There is a scent of fungus and damp earth, like a faint suggestion of autumn. At the same time, a sweetish hint of warm timber is like a promise of spring to come. Inside here, you discover another world, a world where the meaning of time and space is altered. Time goes faster because a beetle lives out its entire life over a single summer. And a fistful of reddish brown wood mould, with its raw tang of fungus, damp and life’s decay, is an entire world for a millimetre-long pseudo scorpion. Inside here live brightly coloured red velvet mites and pallid beetle babies, enormous scarabs and tiny little springtails. Nurseries and pick-up joints stand side by side. There is life and death, drama and dreams, all on a millimetre scale.”
The experience moves through the senses as we picture the dimness, smell the damp earth, and feel the warm timber. And there are a lot of emotional phrases, that make us feel something, too: the promise of spring, the faint suggestion of autumn, life’s decay, beetle babies, nurseries, and pick-up joints.
In just one paragraph, the author lets us experience the drama and dreams of insects in one ancient oak tree.
When you’re next editing your learning narrative, see whether you can sprinkle in a few sensory words. You can use them for abstract concepts, too. Did the meeting go smoothly? Did the presentation dazzle you? Did the comments give you goose bumps?
Sensory details help your voice stand out like a bright beetle or a colourful dragonfly.