The Data Story: Narrative Arc and the Big Idea

Learning objectives

You can:

1. Write a big idea as one sentence carrying a point of view and a stake, and reject candidates that state a fact, hedge, or describe a topic.
2. Build the three-part arc (what is, what could be, the call to act) from a dataset, with the specific number that opens each part.
3. Create tension from a gap between two true numbers rather than from adjectives, and state the honesty constraint that separates a data story from a pitch.
4. Make an abstraction land at human scale by converting an aggregate into a per-person or per-unit figure that is arithmetically identical, without inventing a fact.
5. Sequence the middle of a story as ordered contrasts, each one a pair of numbers, and defend the order against a rearrangement.
6. Separate the analytical spine from the narrative surface, and show that every beat of the surface maps to a computed figure with a named source.
7. Choose the one exhibit the audience will remember, test it against the big idea, and budget meeting minutes across the remaining exhibits.
8. Write a recommendation that is specific, owned, dated and costed, with its payback and the conditions under which it fails.
9. Place the strongest objection inside the story, answered with a number, and state what the appendix then owes the reader.
10. Apply the three tests that stop a claim from overstating (recompute, counter-sentence, population), and weaken a claim to the level the data supports.

Prerequisites & connections

Builds on. PR4.02 is the direct prerequisite: you can already write an action title, run the read-only-the-titles test on a deck, and diagnose a slide whose body proves a different claim from its title. PR4.01 supplies the pyramid, the governing thought and the SCQA opening, all of which are assumed here rather than re-taught. From outside the branch, PR0.01 supplies the audience profile and the medium choice, and PR2.01 supplies the chart-choice grammar that the exhibits below obey without re-deriving it. Arithmetic is the only quantitative prerequisite, though a learner who has worked M2.03 or M8.02 will recognise the cohort and mix analysis faster.

Feeds forward. PR5.01, PR5.02 and PR5.03 take this arc and pour it into fixed archetypes: the consulting readout, the board pack, the investor pitch and the research deck each impose a shape, and the shape is only useful once you can build a story to put in it. PR6.01 takes the finished story into a room, where the ordering decisions made here determine which questions arrive and when. PR7.01 is the capstone that runs analysis to storyboard to deck on an unseen brief, and it grades the arc built here as one of its four scored components.

Five neighbours own material that touches this one, and none of it is rebuilt below. PR4.01 owns the pyramid: the governing thought, the key line, the MECE check on a level, and the SCQA and SCR openings. What is owned here is the sequence a reader walks through, which is a different object from the tree the argument is stored in. PR4.02 owns titles as a sequence, the read-only-the-titles test and the repair of a body that proves the wrong claim; the storyboard below produces a title stack and then hands it to that test rather than redefining it. PR2.03 owns the single chart's action title, small multiples and the dashboard, so the treatment of the memorable exhibit here is about which chart earns the room's attention, not about how to draw it. PR3.02 owns the ghost deck and the dot-dash storyboard as a build technique. PR5.01 to PR5.03 own the archetypes, including where each one puts the recommendation and what its appendix is expected to contain. Where a section below names one of those ideas, it names it and moves on.

1. The big idea: one sentence, a point of view, and what is at stake

A big idea is one sentence that states what you believe, why it matters, and what it costs to be wrong. Three properties separate it from the things that get written instead.