A Better Way to Present Character Dialog in a Book

Narrative Story

In previous issues of this newsletter, I shared how we use narrative stories in experiential learning. In this issue, I'm going to show you how we visually format a narrative story in a book so that it looks good and is easy to read.

I hope that sharing this may trigger some new ideas for you.

Narrative Story — Using text, I guide the learner through their own personal story and journey of discovery.

The Book

This is the book I'm demonstrating — Digital Marketing Superhero — which I describe as a powerfully clear and concise guide to the basics of digital marketing.

A Story About YOU

Our human brains are wired to pay attention to stories. So the book is written as a story — not just a presentation of information that I want you to know.

In this book, the story is a dialog where you, the reader, are the main subject and you are having conversations with other people. The other people are marketing advisors and your role is that of an inventor of a new product that you are about to market and sell.

We don't show "you" in the book, but we do show the other characters. We do this by using illustrated images in a circle, as shown in the example below.

Notice that we also use a speech bubble, similar to what you might see in a comic book. But there are some key differences with our speech bubble:

  1. It's visually simple — just a thin line.
  2. There is no background color — because most of the 200-page book is a dialog, so having background colors would make it harder to read.
  3. There is no closing line for the speech bubble — because it would add unnecessary visual clutter. The next character speaking is identified with another circle as shown below.

Here is a two-page spread:

Compare the style above to this conventional text-heavy layout of a conversation:

Excerpt from "The Wealthy Barber"

And there you have it!

These are the newsletter issues referenced earlier in this article:

How to Design a Narrative Story For Experiential Learning

Designing a Digital Marketing Simulation


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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com