Book Recommendations for Visual Storytelling Posted May 2, 2023

There are three ways to tell a story.

First is through text and the visual and audio are what your imagination brings to life.

The second is audio … think “Peter and the Wolf” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmi5zHg4QSM).

The third is visual. This can either be a traditional comic strip, a graphic novel, a video, or a game. Even casino games, like the ones you can play with FairGo casino login have some aspects of visual story telling.

So how does a person get started learning about visual story telling? Well, there are two parts. The first is the technical aspect … the actual art (drawing, painting, etc.) The other aspect is the story telling. In this article, I am going to focus on the story telling and a review of three books that can help you get started.

99 Ways to Tell a Story

The book “99 Ways To Tell a Story: Exercises in Style” by Matt Madden.

This book was published in 2005, and it has 4.4 stars out of 5 on its Amazon Reviews.

The book is actually very simple. It is just 99 pages long with each page retelling the EXACT same story, but telling it differently through the visual presentations.

“Each comic in this book presents the same story, recounts the same events, but takes a different approach to telling the tale. You will find varying points of view, different styles of drawings, homages, and parodies, as well as interpretations that may challenge your idea of what exactly narrative is. Can a map tell a story? How about a full page advertisement?” Or even an online casio game or role playing game?

This book was based off of the book “Exercises in Style” (which is the same concept in the written form).

I wonder how this would work … to write 99 “stories” about a person who enters a casino, sits down at the black jack table, and wins a huge amount of money. I will let somebody else take on that exercise.

Manga and Fantasy are two examples in this book, but I do not see any specifically titled “Anime”. So try creating your own Anime version of this story, and post your results in the comments.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, because it gets your brain thinking about all of the different ways that you can tell the same story visually. But it does not just have to be visually. If you are using text, what adjectives and adverbs do you use to expand and give flavor to the story. If you are using music, how does pitch, speed, tempo, volume, affect the mood of the story?

Story Telling and the Visual Narrative

The book “Story Telling and the Visual Narrative” is by Will Eisner. It was published in its first draft in 1996 and it was updated in 2008.

This book talks about writing comic books and graphic novels. Comic books are generally 32 to 48 pages, but it can be as little as 16 pages. Graphic novels, on the other hand, are generally between 48 pages to 500 pages.

This book can be classified as an instruction book. The pages have comics as well as informative text that is used to describe the topic. Kind of like the format of Captain Underpants. It is not a picture book, but it is not a traditional chapter book either. It is something in between.

The topics covered in the book:

1. The Story of storytelling – the history of how people told stories … starting from oral traditions and cave drawings to the modern medium of the internet.
2. What is a story? – Introduction (setting), problem, dealing with the problem, solution, and finally the end.
3. Telling a story – The different ways to tell a story (text, visual, audio, or a combination of these elements).
4. Images as narrative tools – Images and stereotypes. When this book was first written in 1996 (version I own), this was considered a standard part of the medium. Now some people may have other views about stereotypes in visual storytelling. Symbols also have stereotypes (lights, guns, and even flowers). Do those symbols change over time? I do not know, but it may be something to think about when providing visual imagery. There is also the concept of how much detail do your provide and how much do you leave the “reader’s” imagination.
5. All kinds of stories – Wide range of stories can be told in the graphics medium. Fiction, nonfiction (history), even science and mathematics. Sometimes it may not even be the the majority of the presentation, but just something to lighten the mood (constroversial historical events) or emphasize a concept or provide a way to demonstrate a complex concept (calculus using a real world example).
6. The reader – Who are you trying to tell the story to? Is it a child? An adult? Someone who is knowledgeable in the topic? Someone who is learning a topic? Are you trying to convey emotions? Understanding your target reader will help in determining how to tell the story. How will your convey information to the reader? Will it be with images or speech or a combination of the two?
7. Reader influences – Readers have perious experiences in obtaining information from other mediums. Even with fiction, this is true. Your book is going to be compared and contrasted their other experiences. Film, text, interactive videos, comics, and even online games that include storytelling.
8. Ideas – Different ideas for writing a story: what if; tell me what happens to …; hero has an adventure; did you hear the one about …
9. The writing process – development of the concept; description of it; and the construction of the narrative chain of events.
10. Storytellers – History of famous graphic storytellers.
11. Art style and storytelling – Style of the images. A science fiction story is going to have a much different visual style than “Maus” (a Holocaust Survivor’s story).
12. Comics and the internet – The internet provides a way to combine text, images, audio, and video.

The Non-Designer’s Design Book

By Robin Williams

“The Non-Designer’s Design Book: Design and typographic principles for the visual novice.

When combining visual storying with other information (instruction books, advertisements, etc.), more graphic concepts need to be taken into consideration.

1. Proximity
2. Alignment
3. Repetition
4. Contrast
5. Color

Even when talking about designing a web page layout, business cards, or online video games, these things need to be taken into consideration.

Summary

A majority of people obtain their information online. That means that they are not just reading text or seeing single images in black and white to obtain information. Color, layout of the page, movement, audio, video … all of these things are used to help convey a story.

How does a website about Anime art compare to a website that is about casino gambling? Just by looking at the front page, we get an impression (good or bad) about what the website is about, who its target audience is, and how it is presenting information.