Blank space

We’ve all been there: the vast white space on the page and either a flashing cursor or a hovering pen almost taunting your lack of creativity.

Anyone can find themselves in this situation. Even people who write for a living can struggle with that blank space, although their experience and knowledge will soon see them through. For most other people, AI language models will give them a starting point from which they can edit and elaborate.

But if you’re an academic or a specialist, AI can only help you so much. There’s a chance the knowledge you need to communicate is only in your head. ChatGPT doesn’t know it yet!

This is especially difficult when you’re writing in an unfamiliar style. Imagine a seasoned academic, or senior engineer, who has been working on a project for years suddenly being asked to write 500 words about their work for a magazine article. This is, at best, a disproportionately time-consuming and challenging task. At worst, they might produce something that needs to be completely rewritten, or misses the mark completely.

Then there’s the problem of knowing too much! Hear me out...

Take our academic: let’s say they’ve published multiple papers on a certain topic for a couple of decades. Imagine the knowledge they’ve generated in that time. How and where do you even start to fill the blank page?

When I started in science communications, I rather naively thought that someone with this level of expertise could easily and quickly write those 500 words. They’ve got all the content they need in their head, right? Well, yes, and that’s the problem.

The day I learned this, I had contacted a magazine editor to say our research feature wasn’t going to meet deadline because the scientist tasked with writing it was unable to put pen to paper – at least not in the little time she had to complete the task. Initially, I couldn’t understand why. All she had to do was write something vaguely interesting and in keeping with the theme of that month’s magazine – a research theme that she was internationally known for.

For me, battering out 500 words is fairly straightforward, but that’s what I do – often (doing it now, in fact). For someone used to other structures/styles of writing such as academic papers, government reports and environmental impact assessments, this was an unfair ask. I had given the scientist no structure, no prescription, no benefit of my experience. I had simply presented them with a blank page and said “Go!”, foolishly presuming their depth of knowledge would make it an easy task.

I know this wasn’t a one-off, because of the magazine editor’s response to my ‘bad news’ that the research feature was not forthcoming. Although this was years ago, I can recall the editor’s words verbatim: “This happens all the time. Let’s make it a Q&A.”

So, the day before the deadline, I present the same scientist with a list of 10 questions about her research. She came back to me with her responses in less than an hour. What had previously been a near impossible task was made infinitely easier because she had a structure and a clear ask.

I have no doubt that this scientist would have been able to craft a perfectly well written magazine feature if time had not been an issue. But I saved her a world of pain by defining the structure of the article and removing the blank space.