Foreground what you saw; background the research

One easy way to look knowledgeable is to put your research in the foreground — the definitions, the citations, the background, the explaining. It's also why so much expert writing reads like a lecture. The best science writers do the opposite: they foreground what they saw and let the scene carry the idea. When Mukherjee needs to explain what a histone is, he doesn't define it. He puts us in a scientist's office as she points at a model — a plastic tube "twisted sinuously around a series of white discs, like a python coiled around a skewer of marshmallows." You never forget what a histone is, and no definition was given.

How it works

Sort every element into foreground or background. The foreground is what you personally witnessed: who you talked to, the prop on the desk, the person's face and what it revealed, the scene in the room. The background is the research — papers, statistics, historical context, definitions — and it belongs behind the scene, in support, not on the stage. Teach inside the scene rather than stopping to define, the way a good film reveals its world instead of cramming exposition into dialogue. And foreground with judgment: a story without judgment is not a story, just a Wikipedia entry, so what you put in the foreground should carry your view of the question, not merely decorate it.

Why it matters

Readers can't hold abstractions, but they can't forget a scene — the marshmallow python does the work a definition can't, because it's something they can see. Foregrounding the research signals expertise and loses the reader; foregrounding the seen conveys the same expertise and keeps them. The research still matters, but its job is to support the thing you witnessed and can describe — and that description is the value of your writing.

Try it

1. List what you actually saw — the room, the prop, the face, the gesture — and what you only read.
2. Build the passage from what you saw; let the scene teach the concept instead of a definition.
3. Push the research into the background, as support, and make sure the foreground element carries your judgment on the question.

Common pitfalls

Foregrounding visuals that don't serve the question — vivid detail for its own sake is clutter, not scene. And the opposite reflex, foregrounding your research to prove you did it, which reads as showing off and buries the one thing readers would remember.

A python coiled around a skewer of marshmallows. With an image like that, you will never forget what a histone is.

WILLIAM · WHAT THE BEST SCIENCE WRITERS KNOW · 2026

Put what you saw on the stage. Put what you read in the wings.

Drawn from

• William, What the Best Science Writers Know That Most Experts Don't (Writer Science, 2026).
• Siddhartha Mukherjee, "The Science of Identity and Difference," The New Yorker.
• Related: Point a camera at it, Enact the bad thing, don't describe it, Drive the piece with a question.