ABSTRACT
Educators begin each semester by introducing students to digital storytelling by having them create a personal story. It provides students with an opportunity to practice the skills necessary to create a digital story. This chapter details the seven elements—point of view, dramatic question, emotional content, voiceover, soundtrack, economy, and pacing—and how to use them to better understand the rhetorical moves made by the storyteller. Point of view is essential to the meaning and emotional resonance of the digital story. It determines what gets written and how it gets said. Storytellers are sometimes bewildered by the dramatic question concept because the vast majority of digital stories do not open with an actual question. Storytellers elicit emotional response through content, tone of voice, soundtrack, and other elements. The voiceover is used to tell the story in the storyteller’s own words in a way that cannot be conveyed through written text alone.
