Telling a Story

Telling stories is an inherent part of the human experience. Your readers love stories! With images, readers can become instantly and effortlessly involved in the story.

Once you have determined the story you want to tell and know what message you want the reader to take away, you’ll need to plan how you’ll use images to tell the story. Let’s look at a few ideas.

Showing a Process

Although one image can work to show a process, more often it’s easier for your readers to understand the process with a few images.

The set of photos in FIGURE 3.5 shows the simple process of boiling water.

Figure 3.5 Show a process: boiling water.

For technical writing, line art often works better than photography when you’re explaining a procedure, such as how to change batteries in a device. Compare FIGURE 3.6 to FIGURE 3.7. In the photo, the lines of the device are hard to see. The line art (Figure 3.7) more clearly shows where the batteries are located.