Storyboarding

Pitch -> Storyboard -> Rough draft of story

This is after

• Exploratory datavisualizations
• Speak to your sources and do your research

A storyboard is a sketch of how to organize a story and a list of its contents.

• Define the parameters of a story within available resources and time
• Organize and focus a story
• Figure out what medium to use for each part of the story

Divide the story into its logical, nonlinear parts, such as

• A lead or nut paragraph, essentially addressing why this story is important
• Profiles of the main person or people in the story
• Different concepts
• Pros and cons
• The history of the event or situation
• Other related issues raised by the story

Divide the contents of the story among the data visualizations.

• What's most effective for the reader?
• Show all the data but emphasize the point you need to make
• If exploratory/interactive, does it fit in the narrative?

A data story is a combination of data, text, and visualizations

• Treat each visualization as if it was a paragraph in your story
• Figure out the narrative structure
• Broad to specific?
• Or specific to broad?
• Split into chapters?

Storyboarding

• A rough storyboard doesn’t have to be high art – it’s just a sketch
• And it isn’t written in stone – it’s just a guide
• You may very well change things after you go into the field to do your interviews and other reporting

Storyboarding

• Helps point out the holes in your story
• Helps you identify the resources (time, data, assistance) you’ll need to complete the story
• Or how you have to modify the story to adjust to your resources

Data storytelling

An imperfect formula for finding interesting stories within data sets

1. Research

Reading articles (archived and recent) around a subject and speaking to various experts can give you an idea what data to look at, what questions to ask of your data and what caveats to look for within your data.

They can also help confirm or question hypotheses.

1. Research

Sources:

• Lexis Nexis
• Academic Researchers
• Government officials

2. Hypothesis

Based on your research and/or data reporting, formulate a hypothesis.

What is your story about?

2. Hypothesis

Bases for stories:

• Are there trends over time?
• Anomolies and outliers (that aren't explained through changes in data collection, errors in the data, etc?)
• Are there interesting reslationships between different data sets (correlational or causational?)

3. Data reporting and analysis

Find data and analyze it to find your story

You want to be proving your hypothesis or finding one through the data analysis

3. Data reporting and analysis

Things to do with your data

• Merge
• Sort
• Summarize
• Isolate and filter
• Visualize for analysis

4. Storytelling

A data story can be many things

• A written story with a data-backed nutgraf
• A data visualization that has a strong point but also allows you to explore more data
• A news app that makes large data sets accessible

Flip it and reverse it

Reverse order works, too

1. Start with the data set
2. Explore the data set based on some hypotheses
3. Research your findings further and adjust your process accordingly
4. Storytelling