How to write a show in 7 "easy" steps

I’ve been thinking a lot about show-development recently.

I mean, sure it’s in my lengthy job-description (#regionalsciencecentres), but I’ve really been thinking about it over the last few weeks.

You might be wondering what the radio silence in this particular corner of the internet has been about this time and mostly, it’s because I’ve been in the Northern Hemisphere on holidays… but since I got back, my days at work have literally been filled to the brim with holiday prep.

Here at Science Space, there’s a predictable visitor ebb and flow. January’s pretty busy because we get a bunch of tourists visiting Wollongong’s beaches during the Summer. Term 1’s usually pretty quiet. Most schools don’t plan excursions that early in the year and most members of the public are recovering from the Summer Holidays. Term 4 is chockers because most schools have realised they need to entertain a bunch of kids who are getting restless and want to be on holidays.

Our busiest time of the year by far is the July School Holidays. It’s Winter. It’s freezing outside (well… freezing by our standards anyway), often if we’re lucky it’s wet and miserable to boot and parents need something to do with kids who are climbing the walls. So they come to us. Yay!

This year, the Summer Holidays coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing so we’re doing a special 2 week-long celebration of all things space.

And that includes a new show… that I got told I was organising on the day I got back from a month-long holiday.

It’s really fine - I love writing shows! So much so that I thought I’d talk you through how I do it.

Here’s my list of 7 steps to writing a live science show for a general public audience.

#1 Pick your topic.

This one’s probably the most important step and it’s a lot more involved than just pointing to a curriculum point and going “let’s do that!”. I remember way back in 2016 (so long ago now right?) during my Sci Comm writing courses, I was told to write down everything you wanted your audience to leave understanding and then cut that in half.

For this particular show, we wanted to focus on the Moon. It’s pretty obvious immediately that this is a bit of a problem for a 30 minute show. It’s not so much a case of “will we have enough to talk about?” but rather “what the HELL do we focus on?”

My advice is pretty simple: get a piece of paper and a pen and start brainstorming. What are all of the possibilities? Doesn’t matter if it seems ridiculous - write it down.

Once you’ve got your scribbles, take a step back and have a break. Then come back and highlight the ones you think are the most interesting/relevant.

Take the moon show for example. We had everything from rockets, to a history of the moon’s formation, to what would happen if the moon exploded. We narrowed it down to a show about NASA’s new 2024 mission - what would we need to survive?

#2 Zoom in some more

Once you’ve got the premise, you need to pick an even narrower topic. (And before you ask, yes this list is basically variations on that theme). Realistically, we’re going to need a comprehensive list of supplies and facilities to survive for any period of time on the moon. Since we only have 30 minutes to go through it, we decided to focus on why air pressure is important in space.

In my mind there were a few good reasons for picking this. The first is that if you don’t need to, don’t reinvent the wheel. At Science Space, we have a show we run for special events that focuses on things you’d need for space travel and it touches on why artificial atmosphere is vital - we had a bunch of demos and a story line to work with. Brilliant.

The second is that currently, we don’t have a show that looks at the physics of pressure. From a business point of view it’s not a good use of my time as an employee on salary to spend a week buried in something we’re not going to use later.

So. Pressure it is.

#3 Come up with a Key Communication Message

That’s right folks - we haven’t even started writing the show yet and we’re at step 3. This is important. Don’t rush it.

A Key Communication Message (KCM) is the piece of information you want your audience to understand once they walk out the door. Your entire show should revolve around this brief statement.

For example, the KCM of our energy show is Newton’s law of conservation of Energy. We want our audience to leave knowing that energy’s not created and it’s not destroyed but it changes type.

For the Moon show, the KCM started off as “to survive on the moon, we need atmospheric pressure and climate control”.

SIDE NOTE: Be flexible with this! Sometimes it can change 3 or 4 times throughout the writing process… or ninety like the moon show…. sigh.

#4 Write an outline

Once you have the KCM, its a simple case of writing out the steps you need to get to it.

Honestly, this sounds simple but sometimes it can take me a week of solid staring at a whiteboard. Some shows seem to write themselves with really logical stepping stones to get to the final point but others, like this one, seem to go around and around in circles.

Often, the problem lies with the KCM - ours was far too broad and pressure itself, it turns out, is really tricky to explain properly. Plus even though temperature and pressure are definitely linked, it’s hard to switch from one topic to the other in a coherent way during a show.

Cue a montage of me chewing the end of a whiteboard marker staring at a bunch of scribbles on the wall trying to make it work.

#5 Test your demos

At a certain point, you just have to go with it. I had a tentative outline with a list of demos that needed road-testing. My general plan is to gather all the things you need then set aside a day to workshop them. There are a bunch of things you need to consider here.

First of all, do they work? Seriously I had grand plans to use a vacuum chamber but the one that arrived was weedy and didn’t do what I wanted it to. Cut to an afternoon trying different settings and balloon thicknesses and shouting at them to “expand damn it!”

Second of all, can the audience see it? Get a friend to come and watch it and tell you if the demo’s big enough. Ask them to tell you what they think is happening. Ask them to describe it so you’re sure they can see it.

Third of all, does it chew through consumables? To be fair, this one’s more of a context-is-king kind of situation, but sometimes it’s really important - like if you’re taking it to a remote community and only have a certain amount of space in a suitcase.

Fourth, is it safe? Are you planning on setting things on fire? Are there better ways to do it that are just as exciting but will result in markedly fewer hospital visits?

#6 Get some feedback

For me, this is by far the most nerve-wracking part. Performing for your peers is literally the worst. Openly inviting them to give you feedback on the performance is even more… worsier… See? I’m losing the ability to speak just thinking about it.

But it’s super important to do. You can have what you feel is the best idea anyone’s ever come up with but if it doesn’t do what you want it to, then it’s pointless. And the only way you’re going to discover that is if you run it for an audience.

Plus if you’re lucky enough to work with a bunch of other talented and creative science communicators like I do, they’ll build on your ideas to make them ten thousand times better.

Like the KCM issue - once I performed the show for my peers, we were able to nail down what we were trying to get across and why. I kid you not, the KCM for the show went from “something something air pressure” to “Space travel is dangerous! But with smart people working towards figuring out some problems, astronauts will be fine. Maybe you can go help out one day!”

To get there, the presenter talks about how NASA is sending them to the Moon in 2024 but there are a few things they’re worried about. They’ve heard that you can explode in space if you suit breaks and that it gets so cold on the moon you can freeze! How can we figure those things out? What solutions have scientists come up with?

On my own I was circling close to that angle but never would have got there without some collaboration.

Extra points if you invite the marketing and communications officer and she ninjas a insta story…

#7 Refine, practice, perform

Take the feedback on board, practice the new suggestions and then you’re good to go!

Show writing is a process that sometimes feels super easy and sometimes seems like you’re banging your head against a wall but stick with it! It’s really fun when you nail it and super satisfying once you figure out that little thing that’s not quite landing.

Do you do anything different? Let me know in the comments! If I had time and we weren’t a tiny organisation I’d probably add an evaluation step in there after number 7. One day…

Science Space is a not-for-profit hands on science centre in Regional NSW. “Fly Me To The Moon” is a show created by myself with copious assistance from my colleagues and I want to acknowledge their hard work and dedication.