Literary exercises for writing scientific manuscripts

by Janice Nigro


That sentence stayed in the article as I wrote it.





What is your concept?




Do you have a theme?




What belongs in the beginning, the middle, and the end?

Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end (so do paragraphs!). Scientific manuscripts have an introduction, the results, and a discussion. Neither set of words is very descriptive. If you call them the hook, the build, and the payoff, as Pressfield does, the nature of the information therein becomes clearer.

The hook is where it all begins. In literature, something happens immediately, often an inciting incident (a murder for example), that makes you want to read the rest of the book.

Why should it be different in a scientific manuscript? Rather than use the Introduction as a dumping ground for information, be discriminating. Which facts led you to the development of your question? Was it some clinical data? Some interesting biological feature of an animal? My hook was the irony in oligodendrogliomas-they grow aggressively in the human brain, but nowhere else, unlike other brain tumors. The “Why is that?” question which I hope I have provoked in readers.

The build gives you the sense of some sort of story momentum originating from a key event. Something happens which leads to an ensuing series of comedic or tragic events. Romeo and Juliet have to meet first.

Build is a perfect word for the results section in a scientific manuscript. Generally, there is a critical experiment that leads us down a path to all the others. The work becomes only more compelling. It was exciting to discover the xenografts in my model system after waiting for months. But the model became even more interesting as we examined the pathology and genetic status of the tumors.

Finally the story reaches the payoff. Payoff implies that there is something to be gained by reading all of the previous events. Hans Solo gets the girl in Star Wars after all of the battles.

What’s the payoff in a scientific manuscript? You have new data, new insight that might lead to a novel treatment for cancer. Or perhaps a novel technology that will be fundamental to understanding most everything else (genomic sequencing). What does your work tell us about where to go next-that’s what you want in your discussion. That’s the gift the reader gets for reading your story.

How badly do you want to tell the story?


Passion makes the writing easier.



Do these ideas help you think about how to write your manuscript? Let me know!

©Janice Marie Nigro/


2 thoughts on “Literary exercises for writing scientific manuscripts

Add yours

    1. Thanks Raj…It’s hard to think of ways to explain how to write a paper. I think the literary parallel works. It really begins long before you actually write it though!

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