Abstract
The book From Data to Stories by Richie Lionell V and Ramya Mylavarapu, published by Wiley Books, provides a fresh pedagogic intervention to data-based storytelling. The text focusses on the way data can be represented as stories for an engaging narration. The format of an end-to-end handbook is aimed at absolute beginners, who want to tell a story with the help of data comics. The interweaves characters with data, to create an interface for students who have data as their core interest. Level of this reading can be set for undergraduate students in the fields of data sciences and media studies. The authors take their readers through a journey of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup of 2019 and present a parallel story of two characters, a couple, Ringo and Priya. The book is broadly divided into two sections: the first section narrates story of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019, while the second lists out the step-by-step process of creating a data comic story.
The first section of the book, titled ‘Bigger than the Game’, is divided into 11 brief chapters, wherein each chapter narrates the story of a game from the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019, culminating in the historic finale played between England and New Zealand. The authors deftly weave the story of Ringo (a 33 years old senior journalist with ‘Sports Today’, who is passionate about cricket) and Priya (a 33 years old senior staff nurse at St. Jude’s Hospital) living in Kingsley Avenue in London (England) into the experience of presenting ball-by-ball scorecard of each match. The ICC Men’s World Cup 2019 is the central idea around which the story revolves. The rationale behind the selection of cricket over other games seems both intuitive and strategic. The game offers the possibility of presenting 600 data points as an equal number of balls are bowled in a limited-over match. The passion for cricket among Indian readers is unquestionable too. To present a data comic on cricket, the authors must have also taken into consideration the passion of a cricket-frenzy nation.
As mentioned by Tufte 1 in his book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, this volume includes the traits of presenting ‘complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision, and efficiency’ (p. 51) and giving ‘the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space’ (p. 51). The chapter, ‘A Kabuli Scare’, stands out in the first section for the panel-by-panel contrast it manages to achieve. The chapter on the India-Afghanistan match juxtaposes the expectations of Dey, a 25 years old product developer, against the reality of the match. Dey speculates how Rohit might even get a triple century in the match, whereas he is dismissed on a duck. The contrast between the two parallel rows of panels –‘In the Skies over Europe’ and ‘At Southampton though, India is struggling …’– is a visual treat (Figure 1). In the later part of the first section too, the authors delve into the thought process of Ringo, who fails to concentrate on the India-Bangladesh match, through its comparison with the parallel frame-by-frame progress of the match. In a chapter titled ‘Things Fall Apart’ (reminiscent of Achebe’s 2 classic novel Things Fall Apart), the authors neatly tie the fate of the Indian team at the World Cup with the two major protagonists of the data comic. If India loses to England in an interesting match, the relationship between Ringo and Priya turns bitter too. As Priya requests him to join her for a Family Day celebration at the hospital, an infuriated Ringo throws her stethoscope and warns Priya to stay out of his work. The final chapter titled ‘What. A. Game’ marks not only the culmination of the ICC World Cup 2019, but a denouement is also attained in the relationship between Ringo and Priya as the latter too expresses her desire to watch the final match and enjoys the match with Ringo, Dey and Dee.
The panel-by-panel contrast between ‘In the Skies over Europe’ and ‘At Southampton though, India is struggling …’ (p. 21). 4
The first section is also interspersed with six tips for creating data comics: (a) visualise your data to find hidden insights, (b) narrate insights from data through comics, (c) use Comicgen to draw, (d) write your script, (e) connect your charts and tables with comic strips, (f) and use a combination of time series charts and linear comic narrations. Though comics are simple, the tips suggest, how they are ‘a powerful way of engaging the audience’ (p. 14) and can convey emotions, which help make stories ‘more memorable’ (p. 14). The tips in the first section also promote Comicgen (https://gramener.com/comicgen/, an open source comic maker library) as a tool for embedding ‘comic strips in web pages’ (p. 18). The book accentuates the importance of getting the script right and mentions a few exercises for the readers too. It is interesting to observe that the authors have used classics of literature as their leads for some of their chapter titles in the first part of the book. For example –‘Kabuli Scare’ reminds of Rabindranath Tagore’s short story ‘Kabuli Wallah’ and ‘Things Fall Apart’ is reminiscent of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart 3 .
The second part of the book, titled ‘How to Create a Data Comic Story?’ is divided into eight chapters arranged in a sequential order. The segment presents a step-by-step tutorial for beginners on how to create data comics. The steps entail fetching the data, asking relevant questions, cleaning the data, extracting new information from existing data, analysing data to find insights, identifying insights and communicating insights in the form of a data comic story. The section is technical and requires basic knowledge of computers. The steps mentioned are to be executed in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Powerpoint and Gramener for creating a narrative with the help of comics.
Data comics are an important resource for future generation of storytellers, as well as learners. The handbook published by Wiley publication might be read with a caveat that it seems to have a strong bias towards Gramener, a design-led data science company. The limitation of the book is that it offers only one solution-based pedagogic method as a suggestion. The book would have been perhaps even more impactful, had the authors considered mentioning other ways of presenting data comics. For instance, an authors’ note regarding the different types of storytelling innovations proposed by other AI-based data storytelling companies such as Phrazor (https://phrazor.ai/) or Charisma (https://charisma.ai/) or NarrativeScience (acquired by Tableau in 2021, www.tableau.com) or even McKinsey (https://www.mckinsey.com/), would have been a welcome step for developing an expansive pedagogic tool for Indian learners. A sequel to this volume in the form of Data Stories across different entrepreneurial ventures could be a welcome series of pedagogic insights. The authors could have also explored a wide range of resources available rather than focussing just on Comicgen. The sequential panels could be slightly more colourful and brightly illustrated to appeal to young readers. Moreover, it provides a basic reference list of books covering a range of subjects concerning comics, storytelling, statistics and visualisation. Since the volume is being projected as a pedagogic reading, a good idea might have been to add a note on the ethical aspects of data-based storytelling. Despite its limitations, it remains a useful handbook for the beginners who wish to weave data and comics together for storytelling. The use of comics facilitates understanding in the three-phase process of perceiving, interpreting and comprehending (p. 20). 5 Given its emphasis and approach, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of data visualisation, sports journalism, storytelling and statistics. Cricket enthusiasts too will enjoy the book.
The book is, therefore, best conceived of as a multidisciplinary introductory volume for new learners and digital tool enthusiasts who have an interest in converting raw data points into lively comics and visual storytelling. The success of combining visualisation techniques with dialogue balloons and text-based storytelling methods for telling non-fiction, data-based stories is yet to be assessed more such volumes are created for gen-next storytellers. However, this book seems like a positive beginning to data comics in India. It is an affordable book for learners of Data Science, Visual Storytelling and Narratives.
