A guide to communicating astronomy with storytelling in planetariums

Because storytelling is a powerful communication tool, many advocate for its use for communicating science. However, astronomical storytelling is not so straightforward for those starting out in the planetarium field who might not know how to create a story from scratch. In this article, I will review the evidence for the effectiveness of storytelling, how stories have been defined in media, and the various types of storytelling frameworks that have been advocated for use in communicating science. I show how the And-But-Therefore (ABT) framework can describe most types of stories, including fulldome videos, and can be used to create compelling content for planetarium presentations. I give example story outlines and present a general guide on converting any science account into the ABT story form.