Storytelling with Data

chapter sixtell a story

Data in a spreadsheet or facts on a slide aren’t things that naturally stick with us—they are easily forgotten. Stories, on the other hand, are memorable. Pairing the potency of story with effective visuals means that our audience can recall what they heard or read in addition to what they saw. This is powerful, and we’ll explore using story to communicate data in concrete ways in this chapter.

As an aside, my order of lessons sometimes surprises people. Some elements of story relate to things that came up when we explored context in Chapter 1—why didn’t we discuss story then? For me, this is the natural progression. Start with context, audience, and message. Time spent there will serve you well even if you don’t take things full course and employ story. There’s value in doing these things up front before you spend much time with your data: they can help you target your data visualization process and make it more efficient. But then after you’ve spent time with your data, know it well, and have identified what you can use it to help others see, it’s time to look at the big picture again and figure out how to best communicate it to your audience. This is the precise moment story comes into play.

Words, tension, and the narrative arc—these are components of story that we can use to get our audience’s attention, build credibility, and inspire action. Not only are well told data stories memorable, but they can also be retold, empowering our audience to help ...