Storytelling with Data: The Dodge’s Eco-Writing App

With her team of students at Bucknell University, The Dodge Contributing Editor Sara Stoudt developed an interactive tool that encourages writers to use ecological data in their creative work. Follow the links below to explore the app and share your responses to the prompts with us.

Look at the overall map of species richness to get a high-level sense for how many unique species are spotted by iNaturalist users across the continental United States. Maybe you want to compare the state you grew up in with the state you currently live in. Or maybe you want to compare a state you are familiar with to a state you have always wanted to visit.

As you scroll down, the app lets you look at various slices of the data, either by year or season, to get a more granular picture of the ebbs and flows over time and across seasons.

Feel free to take screenshots to help you return to your data-driven details. Or you can write down the year or season that you are looking at and recreate the map when you return to the app another time.

There is a place to freewrite in the app itself so that you don’t have to juggle different windows. Just be sure to download your progress before you leave the app.

We hope to share responses to the app’s prompts on our website and social media. Submit your responses through the link below!

Learn about the app from the team who developed it, lead by app developer and Bucknell Mathematics & Statistics Professor Sara Stoudt:

This project aims to streamline the process of accessing data by eliminating data-wrangling steps that may scare writers away from using them as inspiration. We also hope to break the false dichotomy between analytical and creative pursuits, helping writers to see not only that there is a lot of creativity in science-related fields, but that data can be used to increase the richness of writing, providing vital detail, especially in the realm of eco-writing and writing about animals. At a bigger picture level, by introducing data-driven prompts to an eco-writing journal we hope to bring together writers from different backgrounds and encourage cross-pollination across fields. This will serve the need for innovative writing about the connections humans forge with our environment and with non-human animals.

Why an app?