What’s the Big Idea? Five storytelling techniques to boost your impact case study.

It’s no coincidence that many of the top-scoring impact case studies from REF2014 had a compelling narrative.

Stories persuade. They arouse a reader’s energy and emotions. They’re how we make sense of the world, and they’re how we best remember. As author Salman Rushdie puts it: ‘We are the storytelling animal.’ 

But how do you construct a story and how can you make use of this in your REF2021 impact case study? Read on for five storytelling techniques that just might help. 

1.     Controlling idea – how to unify your case study

A ‘controlling idea’ is a narrative tool which answers the how and why life has changed in a story. It’s the single idea that holds a story together and makes it cohesive. Identifying this one line can help structure your narrative and keep your writing ‘on theme’. 

If you could interest your friend in the key message of your work – the how and why impacts occurred – what would it be? Try and boil this down to one line. Pin it up above your desk. Refer to it throughout drafting your case study to help you stay on track. 

2.     Inciting incident – how to bring the reader into a story and make them want to read on  

Take the first line of George Orwell’s novel 1984: ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ In fiction, this is the inciting incident: the moment when the status quo is threatened and the reader is invited into the story. 

Okay, I know we’re not writing literature here, but you do want to engage your readers – the panel – right from the start. And you do that by hooking them in at the beginning. 

What first ignited your passion for your research? What problem did you seek to solve? Was there an urgency to the timing of this research? In which context were you working, and did that influence your desire to create new knowledge as a result? This is your inciting incident, your hook, your invitation to the reader. Make it count.

3.     Progressive Complications 

So you’ve got your reader hooked. Now what? Progressive complications, that’s what. 

This is from the master of story, Robert Mckee: “Good storytelling is the art of describing how (the protagonist) has to dig deeper, work with scarce resources, make difficult decisions, take action, despite risks, and ultimately discover the truth.”

Sounds a lot like an impact case study to me! 

Think about the obstacles you encountered in your research and how you overcame them. Position the problems in the foreground and show how you and your team (the protagonists) battled against these progressive complications in the quest to create knowledge which had real impact. This will help to animate your narrative, and make it more dynamic.

4.     The Payoff – a sense of an ending.

The payoff in a story is when the questions raised in the inciting incident get satisfied. Without it, readers are left with a sense of ‘so what?’.

The ending payoff of your impact case study needs to tell us whether the research made any difference. What actually changed?

What are the answers to the questions raised by your inciting incident? If your case study is about child poverty, for example, at a time of rising UK poverty levels, did your research contribute to an actual decrease in child poverty?

5.     Language – “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives,” Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize Speech 1993.

Once you’ve nailed your case study’s structure, you’ll need to make sure it reads well:

·       Use the active voice where possible. Employ energetic verbs which indicate action and confidence, e.g. triggered, stimulated, challenged. 

·       Be as clear and direct as possible. Use phrases such as ‘led to’, ‘resulted in’ to clearly link your research to impact. 

·       Avoid ambiguity. Wherever possible, use exact numbers and precise impacts, rather than vague phrases such as ‘a number of’ or ‘an impact on’.

·       Get rid of unnecessary words, e.g. ‘The reason why is that…’ becomes ‘because’.

·       Always read your case study aloud: do you stumble over certain words or phrases? If so, it’s likely you’ll need to rewrite for clarity. 

·       Be ruthless about cutting paragraphs which take your case study no further forward, veer away from the controlling idea or repeat ideas you’ve already included.