Hi I'm Isabella

Start your story by highlighting a specific example or case study to bring the story down to a personal level for your audience to relate to. For example, Ana is displaced from her family home due to floods. This is the third time she has been displaced in the past 6 years because severe floods have been occurring more frequently due to climate change. This personal anecdote creates an interesting opening, acting as a "hook" for your audience.

Or instead of an experience, the hook can also be about an object or location. In a separate example, you might want to introduce your audience to a building that was the first coal mining office in the country back in the early 1900s. A century later, it is now a green and futuristic building that symbolises the country's commitment to becoming carbon neutral.

This is where you begin to provide a bit more context to the anecdote in your hook. For example, where does Ana live? Does she live in a low-lying area, and therefore her house is more prone to flooding? Or is flooding a consistent problem throughout the whole country because of its geographical nature? Were there prevention methods available to lessen the damage by floods?

Or in the example of the building, you can briefly talk about the history behind why the coal industry started and what led to that evolution to clean energy. Is that project to clean energy deemed complete, or is it still in transition? Is everything going smoothly, or are there obstacles along the way?

The key point is that this background context needs to connect to the larger picture and your data findings.

This is where you start to bring in your main message and findings for the story.

For example, Ana's hometown has not been studied extensively and the effects on flooding is not well understood. There has been a recent investigation about the land, and there are certain findings in the data that can help us understand why Ana's home is more prone to severe damages from floods than other areas, and why traditional prevention methods may not work as well. You can also compare this data to the global benchmark.

And in the example of the building, you can talk about how the country has been trying to shift to other sources of energy to end their reliance on coal. You can potentially use data on carbon emissions and energy consumption to support whether this transition to cleaner energy has been effective. Perhaps there is an interesting data point on how the transition to clean energy is actually more energy consuming.

After sharing the data, this is where some convincing and advocacy takes place. Why is this issue so important for your reader to care about?

For example in Ana's story, it could be that the floods will only get more intense and frequent with climate change. However, the government is currently neglecting that area because it is considered not as important due to low population numbers. In this situation, you might be encouraging for more awareness and support on the issue, and even drive for some policy changes that could improve the situation.

In the case of the building story, you might be trying to draw attention to green washing and oversimplistic views that the transition to clean energy will save the earth and reverse climate change. Just because a building has gone through a symbolic evolution, it may not mean that the work is done. Perhaps there are other solutions or considerations that you want to bring up.

By bringing the story back to the anecdote, it connects the data back to the real world. It reminds the audience that the data is about people and their lived experiences.

For example, even though legislation or solutions are slow at being implemented, Ana and her community are taking things in their own hands. They could be rallying for more support and awareness about the issue, and forming support groups to help one another during floods. While they might be displaced due to floods, their spirits are not dampened.

Separately in the building story, you might mention that the building has received a lot of attention for its positive transformation. But like a single tree in a desert, whether or not it spreads to become a forest and whether the country manages to become carbon neutral remains a thing to be seen.