Where are the six honest serving men?

A lifetime ago I learned about Rudyard Kipling's 5W1H framework:

I have six honest serving men
They taught me all I knew
I call them What and Where and When
And How and Why and Who

(from The Kipling Method.)

I don't hear about them anymore. Is this still in use in writing non-fiction? How is it used?

BTW: I use the servants for my sequence diagrams which I use to visualize non-fiction stories.

Let us assume that I want to write a story about me and my mapmaking obsession. Then I would start like:

(if the diagram is not readable you can download the diagram and open it with a picture viewer)

On the top and bottom row are the story's actors and participants (humans, object, places, moments in time etcetera, or the who, the what and the where). The arrows visualize the activities (the how) between the participants. You read the sequence diagram top-down following the arrows in sequence (the when). You can put notes in the diagram to explain the why or for other things which need attention or to give more detail on the who, what, were, when or how.

posted over 9 years ago

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