ABSTRACT
Storytelling is one kind of discourse, an especially engaging form, but there are others. The explosion of creative contemporary graphics has been exhilarating; they are everywhere. The best of stories can reach a multitude through an individual, from the personal to the collective. The chapter discusses the first tension between storytelling and data. Stories are about individuals and data are about generalities. The breakpoints between event segments are identified by large changes in the physical stream that signal changes in actions, intentions, and goals. From perceiving events to retellings of events, the spontaneous stories of our lives that we tell our friends. People understand and remember a sequence of stills composed of breakpoints better than a sequence of stills that are not breakpoints. Graphs, charts, and diagrams, like facts, often cannot stand on their own. They need to be embedded in some genre of discourse.
