Outline a story

In this article, you will learn how to:

Build the foundation of a great story

Each story is a set of chapters that contain a cohesive narrative. Each chapter is a lesson that builds off the previous chapters to help the learner understand the concept.

Characters

Create human characters that are set in a realistic setting and provide learners with an explanation before moving on to the application.

Create characters that ask questions themselves, such as an authority figure asking a question. This helps the learner understand a skill, not just memorize how to do it.

Plot

Remember, helping learners learn is the focus. Don’t overdo the story with the details and plot. The topic should drive the lessons forward, not the story alone.

When drafting a story, make sure the content is universal and free of culture or country-specific references. This will make it easier for learners everywhere to understand the content.

Example

A good real-world example for decimals is expressing time in hours, minutes, and seconds. A story stemming from this idea might be about a young child tasked with recording the swim times of her competing classmates using a stopwatch. This setting might span several lessons as the character learns how to read the resulting times, connect the tenths and hundredths place values to minutes and seconds, compare decimal place values, and so on.

Develop a story outline

Once you’re familiar with the basics of creating a story, develop a story outline. This allows you to gain an overview of what you want learners to accomplish, lesson by lesson.

Your high-level story outline should include: