Our amazing team of instructional designers are crafting stories every day for our clients, so we thought we’d ask them for their top tips for making effective stories.
▶️ Consider the desired emotion
Think about the feelings and emotions that you want to evoke through the story. Examples of common feelings are: sadness, humour, inspiration, empathy.
▶️ Don’t be afraid to lean into emotion
Humour sparks interest and keeps people engaged. Don’t be afraid to tell emotionally tough stories – your audience are not children!
Make it as close to real as possible. When people identify with the story – either from their own life experience or someone they know – they’ll be more likely to engage with the learning.
▶️ Interview people about their lived experience
Whenever possible, draw your stories from real life by interviewing people with lived experience. These peoples’ stories deserve to be told, and training is a fantastic opportunity to do this.
▶️ Follow established story conventions
Help learners make sense of the story by using established conventions. For example, a story has a beginning, middle and an end. It might have some element of anticipation and surprise, plot or character development.