Melissa J. Lingle-Martin

As with many digital projects, you can make a narrative project on your own, but you will have an easier time and a wider choice of tools if you build a team.

Narrative projects often follow other types of research or writing projects, but sometimes they stand on their own.

Narrative projects can be done using primarily free resources, especially if you own the media content (or use materials in the public domain) and you already have the skills you need to produce a project. There are many sources, both within and outside academic institutions, tha

Most people who begin a narrative project already have an idea in mind for the general format they will use. Even then, though, you will have multiple choices for most tools.

A narrative project often has a temporal or spatial component. At some level, it always is a way of creating a path through a more complex set of information. Creating a storyboard helps you map out this path, and also decide what visual or other media elements along the way will

To develop a workflow and estimate a timeline for your project, think through the requirements for each stage of your project.

In many cases, a narrative project is itself a form of documentation that expresses the outcome of other research. However, you will likely need additional documentation that explains how the narrative project took on its final form, what resources it used, and who was involved.

Digital storytelling tools can produce projects with a long life, but it is important to consider both the format for viewing/experiencing the narrative and the format for editing the narrative.