Building tension

1. Building tension

The third practical step in forming a data story is to promote rising tension. It should flow naturally from your exposition and fit nicely with your climax, falling action, and resolution. Your data insights and subsequent recommendation make sense to your audience based on how well you prepare them to receive them. Building tension and releasing it is part of that process.

2. Keywords

Keywords are specific words or phrases that help your audience think and feel in a memorable way. Using keywords in your text is a great way to hear your message long after your story is told. You can think of them as "buzz words" that make it easier to summarize the story to others. For example, if your website is "dead last" in its competitive category, you can highlight the keyword "dead" to show that this is an intolerable and extreme situation. Keyword usage should be very subtle. Don't vary far from what is known to be acceptable speech in your organization. Slang and foreign languages should only be used if they heighten anticipation for what follows.

3. Inductive reasoning vs. deductive reasoning

The pattern of building tension is best exemplified by inductive reasoning. When you investigate something, whether you are a member of interpol or a scientist, you use both inductive and deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is the process of making predictions based on evidence. You may have also heard of deductive reasoning. The main difference between each is that inductive reasoning aims to develop a theory, while deductive reasoning seeks to test an existing theory. Inductive reasoning moves from specific observations to broad generalizations, and deductive reasoning is the other way around. For example, if you tell a story, you are presenting first a known challenge and, in your rising tension introducing observations in the form of data.

4. Introducing observations via inductive reasoning

You can use inductive reasoning to add tension and suspense to your text. It prompts the audience to make educated guesses based on your evidence. In this way, you use subtle clues from the data gathered to build suspense in your story. You can use words like "maybe" or "probably" to give the audience a chance to guess what is next. Data analysis in business uses a lot of inductive reasoning to explain patterns in the data.

5. Be methodical, not cheesy

If you present in this way, you will keep the reader engaged until the story's end. But if you don't use these techniques carefully, they can quickly become cheesy and make your story seem fake. To avoid this, you should always use keywords and inductive reasoning in a way that is consistent with the story you are trying to tell. Your tone of voice should be consistent with the urgency of the situation. You have a calm demeanor, but emote and react at natural points that keep your audience at ease. How this looks will vary from organization to organization, it is important to remember that when you engage the audience they are fundamentally on your side and I encourage you to try new things and gather feedback.

6. Let's practice!

Do you understand how to build tension into your story? I can hardly wait to find out with these exercises.

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