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NOTE: I have included the persona I chose for a previous assignment for you to reference. THIS IS NOT THE TYPE OF ASSIGNMENT WHERE YOU CAN GET BY WITHOUT READING THE INSTRUCTIONS/READING MATERIAL.
Felder provides several points about how to structure a story (pg. 110):
Include a beginning, middle, and end
Begin in the middle
Begin with a problem
Tell how the trouble escalates
Sprinkle gold coins throughout the story
The most powerful technique, and one you may have heard in other writing classes, is to show, not just tell.
Writing “The traffic was bad.” (tell) isn’t as engaging as “We idled
along the 101 Interstate, baking in the late afternoon sun like a
thousand shiny cans on a colossal conveyor belt waiting for our turn to
be swept off and packaged in suburban bliss for the night.” (show + a
bank of creativity and interesting detail).
How does storytelling apply to the web? We know we have only
milliseconds to engage a reader, and once we engage them, we’d better
deliver on what our content or navigation promises, or we’ll lose that
visitor permanently. Storytelling is a way to invite readers into your
content and for many types of websites, this is a powerful tool.
Certainly this is not true of all sites: when I visit Amazon, I’m not
interested in the Amazon story, I’m interested in what my search query
will deliver. Transactional sites focus on tasks and expectation (if I
click this, I should get a logical result I can take action
on). Narrative sites tend to focus more on telling a story, or a series
of stories, to teach the reader about products, people, or businesses.
For this assignment, I want you to practice telling a story in two ways, with visuals and with written text.
For your chosen persona (yep, the one you’ve selected and written
about), find a fitting Home page image (as a helluva visual hook), then
create a story that would appear on their website, either on the home
page or a secondary page, like an About page.
Use a visual as your hook—the way you’ll attract a visitor to engage with the site and keep reading.
Follow with a written story about the business or individual, using
as many of Felder’s guidelines as you can (you may find that some of
them don’t apply very well in the limits the web puts on us as authors).
I do NOT want to just see a history about your persona:
Persona was born here and got educated in…

Persona’s business began with…
Our business is based on the belief that…
All of these *might make it on to your About (or another) page, but
they ain’t hooking jack. You want riveting, engaging storytelling on
your Home page.
Rather, tell a unique, exciting story, start in the middle—hook my
interest, so that I’m so thoroughly engaged, I have no option but to
keep reading:
There I hung, 1/4 mile above the Grand Cooley Dam…
“Just where is your liver located?” I thought, as I slowly pulled the blade from my abdomen and handed it back to the librarian.
I started out for Nantucket on Tuesday, but come Thursday, I’d no idea how I wound up in Kenya.
Online, I’d always known her as “Monique,” but when I finally met Ralph in person, I was somehow even more pleased.
People like to say things like they’d walk through lava for love,
but as I saw the actual glowing river flow between us, I had little time
to decide if I had it in me.
These examples, this sort of prose to begin a story (in the middle),
leave the reader hanging in a way that they just can’t, or don’t, stop
reading. They simply must know what comes next (or before).
Also, while it’s fun—and essential—to add detail, the trick is to
remember you’re writing for the web; long paragraphs (which equal much
scrolling) won’t work well, so you’ll need to find that balance between
story length and how long a web visitor is going to stay on your
site/page. It should be AT LEAST a paragraph, but if you find you’re
hitting that full-page mark, that’s probably too much (for your grade
too). No one wants to read that much on a Home page of the sort of site
you’re likely creating.
Think about what your reader is wanting to do or learn about, what
your site has to offer, and how to make your story better than all the
other competing stories out there (other websites with similar
services). You want the reader to feel a connection that motivates them
to stay with the site and click to get additional information.
Be creative! Think about:
that visual and how it can grab ’em to start the story
how being genuine can stand out, given the fact we are surrounded by constant spin
sites that you’ve visited and bookmarked (what got your attention?)
Also, there’s no need to use more than one visual; you should be able
to hook ’em with one. This is the main hero image on your Home (or
other) page.