10 time-saving tips
for sensational digital storytelling
Ever find yourself in this scenario? You have a great story to tell, but you don’t have much time. You also know that there are no funds available for asset creation; you’re flying solo on this one.
by Rachel Bartlett
To help folks with deadlines get started with digital storytelling, we've put together these time-saving tips. In this guide, you'll learn how to build up your story structure swiftly, find, edit, and upload media with ease, and ensure everything looks great before hitting the publish button.
We'll cover:
1. Choose your publishing route early
We know — this sounds like a strange first step! But because some publishing options require some technical support to set up, it’s important to decide on your publishing route as early as possible.
In practice, this decision will take two parts.
First, you’ll need to decide where you publish. This could be on your own domain or subdomain, or a shorthandstories.com subdomain, if you're publishing with us using our simplest publishing option.
Second, you’ll need to decide how you publish. Depending on your choice of digital publishing platform, you may be able to embed your story within your existing CMS, download a ZIP file, or publish with one click to a cloud service like Amazon S3.
Learn more about publishing options by visiting our support site.
2. Map out your digital story
Before you start writing, flesh out a rough idea of how your narrative will be structured. This should just be a skeleton at this stage, and should be relatively flexible, so you can incorporate new ideas as you build.
This rough map of your narrative journey will help you make quick decisions as you start to build, and will keep you on track as your deadline looms.
Within your plan, mark any sections you think should be visually-driven, and whether you need to source photos, illustrations, or video. Also mark where headers or other signposts will help readers.
3. Source your media from reputable sites
Digital storytelling is inherently visual — so once you’ve finished your story map, you’ll want to find great images.
If you’re in a rush, don’t be tempted to use the first thing you find on the web. Instead, check out or list decent stock sites — which includes Unsplash and Pexels (which also offers video — ideal for looping backgrounds), as well as a handful of other niche free and paid options.
4. Use graphic design templates
If you don’t have ready access to in-house graphic designers, check out Canva. It’s free to use, and you can pay extra for enhanced features and access to a wider range of graphics. Canva has an extensive library of templates for different designs and also offers tools for simple photo editing, such as cropping, colour adjustments, and blurring.
Its colour wheel tool can also be of help to find harmonious colour combinations for your designs.
Shorthand also has a library of free templates that are ready to go.
5. Prepare and test your media as soon as possible
Often, the most time-consuming part of digital storytelling — outside of the writing — is fixing issues with your media.
To avoid this trap, upload your media to your digital storytelling platform as early as you can in the process. Make sure it works on all devices, loads quickly, and is properly cropped and centred.
Ideally, your platform will allow you to automatically set a portrait crop for mobile phones. If not, you’ll need to upload another version of the image.
6. Animate natively
Creating animation from scratch can be very time consuming, but can also add a lot of life to a story. The good news is that digital storytelling platforms like Shorthand allow you to create animation effects with simple static graphics.
This is how news agency Stuff animated its story on how the COVID crisis impacted unemployment in New Zealand.
You can also use this technique to animate maps. Simply create a sequence of still images with the same map background, but with a new highlighted area added to each.
To see this technique in action, check out how The Yemen Peace Project illustrated the presence of groups across areas of the country:
7. Stop, collaborate, and listen
Usually, your digital story will need sign-off from someone else. Try to collaborate early in the process, to avoid wasting time making significant alterations to assets or structure to correspond with text changes.
8. Start simple
Many digital storytelling platforms have impressive features. They may even have impressive sample stories that you’re eager to mimic.
Remember, though, that there’s a learning curve to using any tool. If you try to jump in the deep end on your first story, you may end up spending much more time than you intended testing, editing, and rebuilding your final draft.
However, you should still be ambitious for your future digital stories! If you’re looking for inspiration, sign up for our newsletter featuring the best digital stories on the web.
9. Check, and then double-check
Because digital stories include complex media, you’ll need to factor in more time for quality assurance than you would for a typical blog post. A major part of this QA process is making sure your story looks good on all screen sizes and devices.
Hopefully, your chosen digital storytelling platform will allow you to automatically preview your story on all device sizes. This is what we do at Shorthand.
10. Start the next one early
We hate to sound like your high school English teacher, but it’s always a good idea to start the process early. This gives you time to account for hiccups along the way. It also allows you to go through a proper editing and revision process, which will ensure your stories are as beautiful, immersive, and powerful as they can be.
Built with Shorthand