Give your story a human face

The front ends and discussion sections of articles all too often lack a human face that illustrates the abstract concepts discussed and grounds them in human experience. In Chapter 3 I described several ways to put a human face on your abstract concepts, including:

 1.      Describing one of your own personal experiences

2.      Describing another person’s experience (told to you directly, or from media articles)

3.      Creating a fictional scenario

4.      Asking a rhetorical question.

Including direct quotations, dialogue, describing body language, and describing physical behaviors as part of these different approaches to adding a human face further enhances their appeal and effectiveness.

Go through your Introduction; Theory and Hypotheses development (if quantitative), Theoretical Background (if qualitative), or theoretical deliverable section (if theoretical); and Discussion sections. Develop at least one human face example for your Introduction, one for each major component (e.g., as you develop each hypothesis, or lay out each construct) of the other front-end sections, and one for each main topic in the discussion. Across the entire paper, try to create at least one each of the four types of examples identified above. You won’t end up keeping all of them, but try to work at least two or three of them into your manuscript.

© 2021 Timothy G. Pollock

THIS EXERCISE is BEING MADE PUBLICLY AVAILABLE to individuals for educational purposes only. It may not to be used by profit-making entities for any purpose, or packaged and resold by individuals for any other purpose. It may be used by individuals for personal use, or by instructors for classes, as long as this website is identified as the source of the exercise and no fee is charged for its use.

Back to Writing Exercises