In October, TLDC hosted an online event focused on storytelling for learning. My session focused on writing characters and dialogue for scenarios. This was a hands-on session where people practiced creating a character (an instructional designer) and writing dialogue between their character and another character (a SME). I discussed how to make your characters relevant and effective for training and shared tips to help learners identify with your characters. Participants practiced drafting and revising dialogue live in the session. Since we practiced live, the chat served as a place for collaborative brainstorming about character details and dialogue snippets.
Session description
In this hands-on session, you’ll learn how to create compelling characters and distinctive dialogue for scenarios for learning. First, you’ll practice creating relatable characters that share job roles and other qualities with your learners. You’ll explore tips and resources for creating characters that reflect a diverse workforce. Next, you’ll examine samples to learn what makes writing sound “conversational” rather than stiff. You’ll practice drafting conversational dialogue between two characters. Finally, you’ll use the principle of “show, don’t tell” to improve your scenarios and provide the right level of detail. You’ll leave this session with a list of concrete steps you can take to craft better scenario-based learning and drafts of your own characters and dialogue.
Watch the recording
If the video doesn’t appear below, you can watch it on YouTube. While you won’t be able to see the chat, you can follow along with the practice exercises on your own.
More storytelling in learning recordings
You can watch the other recordings from the Storytelling in Learning Gathering sessions as well.
- Humanizing Training with Storytelling with Rance Greene
- How Stories Helped Scientists Succeed with Kim Lindsey
- The Chronicles of Educaria – A Curriculum of Chaos (A D&D Experience) with Keegan Long-Wheeler
Unfortunately, a few originally scheduled speakers had to cancel, but hopefully those will be rescheduled in the coming months.
You can also now watch the recording of my recent Training Magazine panel webinar with Garima Gupta and Rance Greene, “Design for Humans: Storytelling and Scenarios.” Access the recording on the recent recordings page (scroll down to November 19) or on the webinar page.
Tips for creating characters and writing dialogue
Check out some of my previous posts on creating characters and writing dialogue.