How to tell a Duckling story

A storyteller's guide to the format.

You are not uploading a project to a portfolio or writing a pitch for a foundation. You are a storyteller sharing a story. This guide covers the two halves of that: the telling, and the building.

The wireframe examples in this guide are invented. The real stories are shown with credit.

Part One
Telling
The scene, the stake, and the voice. What makes someone stay past the first card.
Set the scene

Open like a storyteller, not like a grant application.

Start by describing what we are going to experience, and why we should stick around. Give us a place, a person or a question, and your reason for being there. Save the background facts for the cards where they belong.

Why it will make your story stick

Readers stay for a question, not a topic. The first card decides whether there is a second.

Weak: a project intro
This project documents the last inhabited lighthouse island in the northern archipelago. The island, located forty kilometres off the coast, has been continuously inhabited since 1873, when the lighthouse was constructed. Today only four permanent residents remain, following decades of depopulation driven by the automation of the lighthouse in 1994 and the decline of the local fishing industry. The project examines daily life, infrastructure, and seasonal isolation.
Strong: a storytelling intro
Forty kilometres off the coast, an island is going quiet. Four people still live beside a lighthouse that no longer needs a keeper. I spent a winter with them to find out what makes someone stay when every reason to leave has already won. A question more of us will face, as the places we come from empty out.

Same facts, different job. The first tells us what the project is. The second tells us why we should care, and who is taking us there.

Part Two
Building
The cover, the cards, the captions, and the video. How the format wants to be used.
Make a beautiful cover

The cover is a full-bleed image with your title on top.

Choose an image that works full-bleed and does not fight the text. If the photograph has writing or busy detail where the title sits, choose another image or another crop.

Weak: the image is not full-bleed, and text in the image conflicts with the title
The Last Winter.
The Last Winter
Strong: the image is full-bleed, and the title sits where nothing competes with it
The Last Winter
One thought per card

Give every card one job.

  • Let the visuals breathe by giving them space and focus.
  • Do not build text-and-image layouts inside a card. It weakens the image and breaks on small screens.
  • Let text cards be short. They carry the story between images, not instead of them.
Why it will make your story future-proof

Your story will be viewable on all kinds of devices, from phones to glasses to whatever comes next. Clean cards adapt. Layouts do not.

Weak: image and text crowded into one layout
Strong: the image lives by itself, and the thought gets its own card

The ferry used to come twice a day. Now it comes when the weather allows, and the islanders plan their lives around it.

Use the built-in captions

The caption carries the who, where, and when.

  • Captions tell who, where, and when.
  • A photograph with context is much more valuable.
  • Captions add metadata that makes your story discoverable.
Why it will make your story future-proof

Viewers can turn captions on and off, so the photograph stays clean and the context stays available.

Strong: the portrait starts your imagination, and the caption gives context
A portrait card with its caption: who, where, and when
From "While Silas Waits", a Duckling story by Emil Mogensen.
Think card stories, not movies

A story you watch actively, at your own pace.

  • A Duckling story is a visual experience you watch actively, at your own pace.
  • It is not a YouTube or Netflix film you watch passively on the couch.
  • Use one-minute videos for interview soundbites or central scenes, and tie them together with text cards.
Why it will make your story future-proof

Cards make collaboration possible. Text, images, and video can be mixed and remixed between storytellers. Long, linear video cannot.

Setting the scene: the storyteller takes us on a first-person walk through the place
A one-minute scene-setting video card with subtitles
From a Duckling story by Bjarke Winding.
The interview: we get a feel for the person, who answers one question in a minute
A one-minute interview video card with subtitles
From a Duckling story by Bjarke Winding.
Short stories are fine

A few strong cards are better than many weak ones.

Our purpose is to make thoughtful stories with attention rather than speed. That works in short formats too: three to five cards can carry a complete story.

It is better to publish your work than to stay silent.