It’s important to remember that all academic writing is storytelling. Yes, even for scientists. The data don’t speak for themselves - you need to create a narrative that explains how you pursued your research, what happened, who was involved, and why it matters. Humans are wired to respond to stories, so it’s the perfect vehicle for communicating complex ideas.

If storytelling feels alien to you, there’s good news: successful stories follow a common structure. There are many different structures you could use, but OCAR is especially helpful for academic writing.

In this post, I’ll explain what OCAR is and how you can use it.

What is OCAR?

OCAR stands for Opening, Challenge, Action, and Resolution. Let’s take a look at each of those elements in turn.

  • Opening: Setting the scene/context and introducing the “characters”. Characters aren’t necessarily people, they could be data, manuscripts, or concepts. Then you narrow to the …
  • Challenge: What’s the question you want to answer? Or the problem you’re trying to solve. How are you going to approach it? Which leads to …
  • Action: What you did and what you found. In narrative terms, this is the denouement, which climaxes in …
  • Resolution: How has your understanding changed? What are the consequences of your findings? What does this mean for your field and beyond? This should link back to your opening.

There are variations on the basic OCAR structure. For instance, you could use OSCAR, where the S stands for “Situation”. This could be helpful for relating your research to what’s happening in the news: this is why it matters right now.

Here’s a short fictitious example to show how OCAR works in practice:

  • Opening: Recent advances in machine learning have transformed how we analyze large datasets, but these tools remain inaccessible to many researchers without programming expertise.

  • Challenge: How could we create an interface that allows non-technical researchers to apply machine learning methods to their own data?

  • Action: We developed and tested a browser-based tool with 50 researchers across five disciplines. Participants completed analysis tasks and provided feedback on usability.

  • Resolution: Our tool enabled researchers to conduct analyses previously requiring specialist skills, democratizing access to advanced methods. This approach could be applied to other technical barriers in research.

For funding applications, you’d write this in the future tense, describing what you’re hoping to do, rather than what you did.

How to use OCAR

There’s no right or wrong way to apply OCAR. One practical approach is to use these questions as writing prompts. Work through them in order, jotting down answers - even rough notes will help you identify what you need to include and in what sequence.

  • What’s happening at the moment? (O)
  • Who or what are the protagonists? (O)
  • How does this relate to world events? (O/S)
  • What’s the question you want to answer or the problem you’re seeking to solve? (C)
  • What’s the element of change you’re hoping to achieve? (C)
  • How did you pursue your mission? Describe the events. (A)
  • What did you find during your mission? Was anything unexpected? (A)
  • How did your understanding change? Were your findings what you anticipated at the beginning? (R)
  • What will other researchers be able to do differently as a result of your findings? (R)

If you have an existing draft, you could use OCAR to audit it. Have you included all these elements? Do they appear in a logical order? You might find you’ve jumped straight into the Action without explaining the Challenge. Or perhaps your Resolution doesn’t connect with the Opening. It should come full circle.

OCAR also works at a fractal level - meaning you can apply the same structure at multiple scales within a single piece of writing. For example, your entire thesis might follow OCAR:

  • Opening: The broad context of your field.
  • Challenge: The gap in knowledge your thesis addresses.
  • Action: Your three studies (Chapters 2-4).
  • Resolution: Overall contribution and implications.

But then each individual chapter can also follow OCAR, with its own mini-story. And even within a chapter, each major section could use the structure to present a specific finding or argument.

This nested approach helps readers navigate your work at different levels - they can grasp your overall narrative arc while also understanding how each component contributes to the whole.

For more discussion and examples of OCAR, see the excellent Writing Science by Joshua Schimel by Joshua Schimel. The advice is applicable for writers in any discipline.

Other applications for OCAR

OCAR isn’t just helpful for publications. You can use it in presentations, online profiles, and funding applications. Indeed, this structure is especially effective for the new Narrative CV format, where you’re telling mini stories, rather than simply listing your achievements.

As you use OCAR, you’ll soon find ways of making it work better for you and your research. Even if this approach isn’t quite right for you, it’s a helpful structure to get started. Your goal is to get that idea out of your head in such a way that someone else can understand it.

Whatever you’re writing, you’re telling a story. OCAR gives you a reliable and flexible framework for structuring that story and sharing your important research with the world.