Science AMA Series: I'm Randy Olson, a Scientist Turned Filmmaker in Los Angeles, California. I do research and writing on why scientists are afraid of storytelling and how to change that. I’m here today to talk about the "ABT framework." AMA!

See the source article by following the link below:

Hi reddit,

Twenty years ago, I left my tenured professorship of marine biology for Hollywood. I had a single goal — the cure for being boring (especially for scientists, some of whom need it bad). I found it in a narrative template I crafted and labeled as “The ABT.” It comes indirectly from the co-creators of the Emmy and Peabody award-winning animated series, South Park. In a 2011 Comedy Central documentary about the show, they talked about their “Rule of Replacing” which they use for editing scripts. They replace the word “and” with “but” or “therefore” to improve storytelling — so I turned it into the “And, But, Therefore” template (the ABT). It is now the central tool in my mission to keep people from being boring. I present it in my new book, “Houston, We Have A Narrative,” use it in my work with individual scientists, and have built my Story Circles Narrative Training program around it, which I now run with scientists from NIH and USDA. Together, with this marvelous narrative tool, we are fighting to make the world a tiny bit less boring of a place.

I'll be back at 1 pm EST (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything!

">Science AMA Series: I'm Randy Olson, a Scientist Turned Filmmaker in Los Angeles, California. I do research and writing on why scientists are afraid of storytelling and how to change that. I’m here today to talk about the "ABT framework." AMA!