The art of storytelling is as old as the human race itself. Our earliest forms of communicating / communication / communicated were deeply visual in nature – the ancient artwork found in caves for example. In the modern world with the power of communications media, visual storytelling techniques has arguably become more important than ever. It is directly related to the success, or otherwise, of marketing, advertising, and much of the digital entertainment that is currently available / availability / unavailable.

Here are some technician / technical / techniques that you can use to help you to construct / constructed / construction an effective visual story.

Show your audience information rather than telling them about it. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words! Use vivid imagery that works together with your appropriate / appropriately / appropriated reduced written word.

The human brain is programmed to make quick impressions followed by fast decisions. This means that the first impression of your chosen image is important. The intended message needs to be quickly and easily understood.

The image should be dynamic. This does not mean fancy animation, although that may help, but still pictures and photographs can also suggest movement. Think about comic strip artwork, for example, which shows a lot of action to engage the reader.

A story must have a story arc. This means having a clear beginning, middle, and end. In other words, it must take us on a journey. English language readers will naturally ‘read’ from top left to bottom right, so bear this in mind when composing your image. Perhaps the ‘Hitchcock rule’ might help here – the size of any object in your frame should be proportional to its importance to the story at that moment.

As noted in previous posts (AWL Exercise 7 and Reading 7a – Mini-Saga (project overview)), your story needs some kind of conflict. Without any conflict, there is no story. This does not need to be violent, simply a challenge that the hero must overcome. Think about how this conflict can be portrayed in the visual elements of your work.

People like stories about people. This means that your story should be related to people in some way, or at least the characters will need recognisably human personality traits.

Don’t get lost in providing lots of unnecessary details. Make sure that the main message is always emphasised to your reader.

Finally, many great stories tell some kind of lesson or message that the reader can learn.