I first read this paper in graduate school. It wasn’t assigned. I found it on my own—probably during one of those late-night deep dives into the internet, half reading for a lab presentation, half procrastinating from a dataset that just wouldn’t behave.
The paper is called “Narrative Style Influences Citation Frequency in Climate Change Science,” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. A team of researchers at the University of Washington tested whether scientific articles written in a more narrative style were more likely to be cited than their dry, expository cousins. And they found something that hit me like a thunderclap: yes, narrative writing—storytelling, essentially—made a measurable difference in the uptake of scientific research.
At the time, I was deep in the world of AI and bioinformatics, where the primary currency was clarity, data, and objectivity. But this paper changed how I thought about communication—not just in science, but in policy, strategy, and now, writing for you in The Connected Ideas Project.
Because here’s the thing: the best writing—technical, scientific, or otherwise—is always telling a story. It’s not fiction. It’s not spin. It’s simply the reality that readers, no matter how trained, want to be brought along. They want to understand not just what something is, but why it matters, where it leads, and what we should do about it.
The podcast audio was AI-generated using Google’s NotebookLM.
A Paper That Measured Storytelling
The authors of the study didn’t just say “stories matter”—they quantified it.
They selected 732 abstracts from peer-reviewed climate science literature and had crowdsourced evaluators assess six narrative elements in each one:
Setting – was there a place or time?
Narrative perspective – was there a narrator?
Sensory language – could you feel or sense anything?
Conjunctions – did the sentences connect logically, like a story?
Connectivity – were ideas threaded together?
Appeal – did the author make a moral claim or call to action?
Each abstract was given a composite “narrativity index.” And the results were stunning: papers with higher narrativity scores had significantly more citations, even after accounting for things like number of authors, journal impact factor, and abstract length. In fact, the most highly cited journals also had the most narrative abstracts.
In short, writing like a human being—not just a data-bot—mattered. Which is hard because we are basically trained in science to NOT writing like this.
But It’s Not Just About Citations
Citations are a proxy for impact, sure. But they’re also a proxy for memory. For influence. For salience in a world drowning in PDFs.
And here’s where it gets even more interesting: some of the most statistically significant boosts came from conjunctions (words that tie ideas together) and connectivity (repetition or reference that builds coherence). In other words, the abstract didn’t have to be a Shakespearean monologue. Just giving the reader a breadcrumb trail made a difference.
Even appeal to the reader—something many scientists are taught to avoid in the name of objectivity—correlated with higher influence. And yet, you can still be objective while inviting readers to care. Good objectivity can still be a story.
That balance between narrative and expository writing isn’t a tradeoff. It’s a craft.
TCIP Was Born From This Belief
This paper sat with me for years. I would think about it every time I tried to write a funding proposal, craft a strategic document, or explain technical ideas to a policymaker. Why is no one listening? Why doesn’t this report land? Why does this memo die in someone’s inbox?
And eventually I stopped asking those questions and started changing how I write.
That shift is part of why I created The Connected Ideas Project. Because too many important ideas never get their due—not because the science is flawed or the data is bad—but because no one took the time to tell the story behind it.
Not a made-up story. Not a TED Talk. A real story: of discovery, of risk, of consequence. A story that says, “Come with me. I’ll show you something that matters.”
The irony, of course, is that science used to be story. Darwin wrote Origin of Species like a personal letter to the world. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring led with dead birds, not pesticide data. The first climate models were scrawled out like sketches of possibility.
And then we got professionalized. And cautious. And bureaucratic.
But this paper reminded me that even the strictest scientific literature—peer-reviewed, citation-counted, jargon-laden—still responds to storytelling.
And if that’s true for climate scientists, it’s true for all of us.
It’s actually a large part of my I started writing weekly sci-fi short stories and eventually my first novel. Because once you start to feel the power of narrative, it’s hard to stop.
I have actually released my debut novel to TCIP subscribers early. If you want to read it before you can buy the book, subscribe to the Saturday Morning Serial. One chapter, every Saturday, just for you. A thank you for supporting TCIP.
Writing for the Mind and the Brainstem
The neuroscientific case is compelling, too. When we read stories, we engage parts of the brain associated with memory, emotion, and social cognition. Our brain lights up differently than when we read expository text.
In a policy world obsessed with “impact,” this is critical. Because it means storytelling isn’t fluff. It’s the only way some ideas ever sink in.
When I sit down to write a Tech Tuesday piece—or structure a research strategy, or brief a government official, or help steer an organization—I think about this paper. I think about the balance between narrative and fact, between arc and evidence, between compelling and correct.
That’s the frontier. Not just of biotechnology or AI or national policy.
But of communication itself.
What This Means for You
If you’re reading this, you probably communicate professionally. Maybe you write research papers. Maybe you’re a policymaker, or a startup founder, or a systems thinker trying to bridge fields. Or maybe you’re just tired of ideas getting lost in the noise.
Here’s what this paper—and my experience—tells us:
Tell a story, even in your technical writing. Not a fable, but a journey. A “why,” not just a “what.”
Connect the dots for your reader. Use conjunctions. Repeat key ideas. Build momentum.
Don’t be afraid of emotion. An abstract with a moral appeal is more influential than one without.
Even in hard science, narrative matters. Because humans are still the audience.
And if you want your work to last, your ideas to travel, and your impact to grow—write like it matters.
TCIP was born from the belief that big ideas need more than bullet points. They need clarity, momentum, and heart. And maybe a bit of sensory language and moral appeal.
Thanks to a paper I found in grad school, I’ve spent the last decade trying to write that way.
And if you’re still reading, I’d say it’s working.
Let’s keep telling better stories,
—Titus
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