I follow a few principles to get my message across:

• I believe in the utility of revealing a bit of information at a time. If someone sees an entire model all at once, they may be overwhelmed and not know what's important to focus on first.
• I believe in the utility of letting people interact with the model from the start so that they can see it somewhat as I developed it, from a simple idea through a complete model.
• I believe there's utility in letting people control their experience.

Then I create a button on the interface layer labeled with the name of the model I want to show to people. I double-click on the button to open up a dialog, select the Storytelling radio button, and then click on the Create Story button.

That brings up a new dialog that lets me perform three basic actions: add elements from my model to the story, annotate the story with text, or shuffle the arrangement of elements in the story.

Here's a tip you won't find in the iThink documentation. I prefer to write and edit the text of the story in one file that I can see and edit as a whole, not as short segments as I would using iThink. I open up my favorite editor (I use GNU Emacs, but you may use any editor you wish) and begin to tell the story of the model in words. I'll note which pieces of the story go with which sections of the model, perhaps by placing a row of hyphens in the text to separate sections of the story. I try to give the reader multiple opportunities to run fragments of the model as I develop the story.

Now it's time to add the pieces of the model in the sequence I want to show them to the reader. Clicking on the Build Story button in the Storytelling dialog takes me to the Model level. I start by framing the scene, as I would a picture. I position the model as I wish to see it using the scroll bars and then click once on the camera icon on the left side of the window. That sets the position of the view I'll show my readers.

Then I click on one element (stock, flow, text, button, etc.) of my model at a time in the sequence I want to see it in the story. If I get the order wrong, I can always edit it later. It takes practice to select a connector without deselecting the underlying stock or converter, but that shortly becomes natural.

When I've selected sufficient pieces of the model, I click on the up arrow on the left side of the window to return to the Storytelling dialog. Now's the time to enter the text of the story.

I simply select a model element (stock, etc.) in the list and click on the Annotation button to add a placeholder for the text. Then I can double-click on the annotation in the list and add the text I've already written for that section of the story.

Remember the story sitting in my text editor? I switch back to that window, eliminate word wrap (iThink will take care of word wrap later), and copy the text for that section of the story from the editor into the iThink dialog and click OK.

Once I have all the pieces together, I shift-click any ranges of items in the list that I want to show up at the same time. Typically, that will be a stock, its associated flows, converters, and connectors, and a bit of text. Then I click the Group button to group them together.

When I'm done, I click OK twice, save my model, and click on the button to try out the story. Every time I hit the space bar, I advance one more step through the story; if I hit the backspace key, I back up one step. Of course, the iThink documentation gives more detailed information, but it really is that simple.

The next time you create a model to help a group work through a model, try iThink's storytelling feature to communicate the results.