Narrative in building instructions

[knotian]

Since this is my first time considering actually releasing building instructions, I'd like a little advice.

What is the general opinion of having a narrative included with the building instructions, rather than a separate PDF.

As I design and build I also write a 'story' about the history, the problems/solutions I ran into while building, and the reasons I deviated from the original's blueprints. These are  organized in the same order as the major component builds. Sometimes 'humorous'. I have done this with all my models, Lego and Wood. The usual method is commented jpg and text files.

I am considering placing the material between major modules, not in the detailed instructions. The history and original blueprints would be at the beginning. I've also thought I'd put it all in the back after all the instructions and BOM.

Comments?

[supertruper1988]

Having made a lot of instructions myself, the dedication to also write a narrative would be great to see but man that is so much work haha! 

Would love to see how it turns out for sure!

[Calabar]

The story would be a very interesting addition, but it runs into a huge problem: localization.
Even though English is a sort of universal language, it is not accessible to everybody, especially if the challenge is to read a long text. So I think that insert the history in a separate file would make easier to work with different translations (if any) and would avoid to create multiple versions of the instructions.

Anyway, once the "story" PDF file is created, it is matter of few moments to merge it with the Building Instructions one. So the only thing you should take care is to prepare the Building Instructions to integrate some external page if you mean to leave open the possibility to insert the "story" inside it.

[knotian]

Calabar,

Excellent point

I keep forgetting the international scope of the Lego world. Distribution of the language absent instructions plus a translatable narrative, combined in a zip file, is probably the best way to address the issue .

Thanks,

Ed

[Mylenium]

21 hours ago, knotian said:

What is the general opinion of having a narrative included with the building instructions,

Personally I don't want to get distracted during building and always skip over those pages.It's also kinda two different mindsets, anyway. I remember this from my days when I was heavy into aircraft scale modeling - reading articles on development history vs. pouring of the color schematics and scale drawings was always separate. One day I would delve into the "cool" stuff and obsess about rivets in the drawings, but it could take months before actually reading the associated article/ book pages and in the meantime I often even had built the model already...

Mylenium

[M2m]

This reads like some of the stuff done in UCS sets or LEGO ideas. 

I tried to copy this style once for one of my instructions:

https://github.com/m2mmbp/bricktopia-planitia/blob/master/17011_BI_EN_01.pdf

[supertruper1988]

4 hours ago, M2m said:

This reads like some of the stuff done in UCS sets or LEGO ideas. 

I tried to copy this style once for one of my instructions:

https://github.com/m2mmbp/bricktopia-planitia/blob/master/17011_BI_EN_01.pdf

That is a pretty cool way to do it!

[knotian]

Waaaaay beyond my plans!!!!

Ed