Common Structures

The monomyth, or the hero’s journey, is the common template of a broad category of tales (used by starwars) that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, and in a decisive crisis wins a victory, and then comes home changed or transformed. Older and easier templates are the dramatic structure and narrative structure.

The Story Spine

Originally created by playwright Kenn Adams, is a tool for creating well-structured stories. It is a series of sentence fragments that prompt the narrative elements of a story, and it can be used by itself or in conjunction with any exercise in which individuals or groups are asked to make up stories. The Platform: Once Upon a Time…, Everyday… The Catalyst: But one day…, Then something change… The Consequences: Because of that… (repeated as may times as you wish), And then …. Occurred, And then….. The Climax:  Until finally…, Then suddenly The Resolution: Ever since then…, And the moral of the story is…,  And the funny thing was….

Using Cast

The diagram below is called a Visual Story Map. It has been developed to illustrate the process for creating a visual story. More details can be found in the book: Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations,

Beyond the Story

A successful learning solution should not stop with a story and should include Constructivism and Behaviourism. A good guideline during the development of your eLearning course can be provided by using the 3 M’s, as explained in the book Designing Successful e-Learning by Michael W. Allen. This is making sure that your eLearning courses are meaningful, memorable, and motivational.  If you fail to achieve one of them, your solution won’t be as impactful as you desire. To make it more learner centric it should be an active experience within the learners context, supported by progress feedback and an assessment.

Icons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com is licensed by CC 3.0 BY