Writing a book or article about science? Make sure you include some gardening anecdotes

Cognitive Daily has a funny and useful post entitled How NOT to write a science book. Recommended reading for anyone who plans on writing a science book or any other type of book, or an article, a blog or delivering a lecture or sermon.

The first point is as follows:

Use lots of anecdotes. A good writer should tell a story, right? Keeping a thread of a plot will help perk up a reader’s interest through dense scientific information. Even better, you might think: string together thirty or forty unrelated stories per chapter, each making the exact same point. Your readers are stupid, so you must repeatedly pummel them with the same information over and over again, in nonscientific anecdotal fashion. After all, who would read a science book to get scientific information? Not your readers, that’s for sure. This tactic also shows off the important scientific goal of demonstrating that you have lots of friends who are willing to tell you stories that you can then write about in your books.

In other words, keep it relevant and don’t repeat yourself.

There’s more where that came from, so go and read it now!