I want to write about this phenomenon: "edutainment", and why it's amazing. It's not new; good teachers have known forever that you can't have bored students, and telling a story is everything.
We are humans, after all, so of course we want stories whenever we're learning!
Exactly. In fact, the ability to tell stories is often credited as one of the reasons that made humans able to congregate in large groups forming towns, cities, and civilisations. So storytelling is innate in us.
But technical writing has historically shied away from this
I sit at a weird juncture of technical writing (maybe 20% of what I do), philosophy, history, physics, and several other spots, interlaced with my own story and experiences, so it's pretty easy for me to weave a narrative in for the reader to an otherwise potentially dry subject.
But there's no reason a purely technical writer shouldn't do as you suggest! Entertain the reader, and the reader will reward you with understanding and attentiveness to what you have to say, right?
I felt I should use that expression, but I’m not really “preaching” anything. In my technical writing, I’m experimenting a lot rather than following a “rule book”, and in Breaking the Rules I’m thinking aloud, documenting my ideas and research into this field
I want to write about this phenomenon: "edutainment", and why it's amazing. It's not new; good teachers have known forever that you can't have bored students, and telling a story is everything.
We are humans, after all, so of course we want stories whenever we're learning!
Exactly. In fact, the ability to tell stories is often credited as one of the reasons that made humans able to congregate in large groups forming towns, cities, and civilisations. So storytelling is innate in us.
But technical writing has historically shied away from this
I sit at a weird juncture of technical writing (maybe 20% of what I do), philosophy, history, physics, and several other spots, interlaced with my own story and experiences, so it's pretty easy for me to weave a narrative in for the reader to an otherwise potentially dry subject.
But there's no reason a purely technical writer shouldn't do as you suggest! Entertain the reader, and the reader will reward you with understanding and attentiveness to what you have to say, right?
That’s exactly my thesis for this substack (and I hope I practise what I preach in my other substack!)
Please weigh in on my Edutainment article when it comes out! Would love to hear your thoughts.
Will do
I felt I should use that expression, but I’m not really “preaching” anything. In my technical writing, I’m experimenting a lot rather than following a “rule book”, and in Breaking the Rules I’m thinking aloud, documenting my ideas and research into this field