Using comics to capture and make sense of stories

Posted by  Shawn Callahan —January 23, 2006
Filed in Business storytelling

ComiclifeHere at Anecdote we mostly capture stories using anecdote circles recording what’s said on digital audio. But this is not the only way for people to gift their stories. A fun approach, which can be done in small groups, is to get people to remember key events and capture these stories in comic book form.

You can do this all by hand but you might find people are reticent to display their drawing skills. Or you can software like Comic Life (mac only) and preload a set of images of workers with lots of different expressions and use these as your characters.

Comics can also be used to make sense of stories that have already been collected. You might like to represent the archetypes extracted from the narrative and ask the workshop participants to illustrate key values which have emerged. This type of activity helps the participants understand what people mean by the values because they need to converse to create the comic. It also creates a powerful artifact of what was discussed.

About  Shawn Callahan

Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:

Comments Off on Using comics to capture and make sense of stories

Blog