How Not Being Able to Write Made Me a Better Writer: Lessons from a Comic Case
Writing comes easily to me, so I haven't given much thought to how I do it.
At least not until I had to change formats and “write” a comic.
But this has been on my mind as I look forward to the upcoming Medium Day on September 19, 2025. Please join us!
As someone who has spent decades writing traditional case studies — field-based, prose-driven, and intended to foster analysis through structured discussion — I am very efficient now at communicating facts and deciding what to exclude and what to include to serve a pedagogical need.
In addition, for years, I have been an active member of our Medium community to raise awareness of, and provide options for, improving mental health at work. My Medium articles are more creative and more personal, but entirely in prose except for an illustration that inspired the post or complements it. (Thank you, Francois Top, for his splendid work).
But I found myself having to write for the first time — without words — when three faculty members recently invited me to develop a session around alternative case formats, for the Academy of Management’s (AOM) 2025 annual gathering. It is the world’s largest professional association in the field of management and organization studies, with over 20,000 scholars and practitioners from more than 120 countries.
Should I Draw the Line?
The resulting “comic case,” titled Should I Draw the Line?, follows a business school professor, Alex, who — like all good case protagonists — faces a dilemma: how to teach a case on workplace harassment in a way that engages students, fosters emotional insight, and avoids abstraction. Alex’s story is that of one of our co-presenters.
When Alex receives tepid or disconnected classroom responses to his initial, conventional, text-based case, Alex considers whether a comic format might convey the story’s emotions and power dynamics more effectively.
The “comic book case” explores Alex’s internal conflict, conversations with colleagues, and includes an institutional context.
The case is told through a mix of written and visual elements, including illustrated panels that reflect both content and tone.
In short, the “comic book case” is a “case about a case.”
But it is also about the professional and emotional risks of teaching complex topics in business school settings in an innovative way, as well as an acknowledgement of resistance to innovation in institutional settings generally.
Fundamentally, we ask: Is there a responsible way to use non-traditional formats for sensitive topics? Or are the risks too high for both the instructor and the institution they are part of?
If you go too “far over the line” in adopting new methods, no matter how effective those methods are in conveying information, is it worth the risk?
This is a meaningful question as traditional forms of education are upended, and both children and adults learn (and seek out knowledge) as much from YouTube and TikTok and message boards such as Reddit, as they do from formal academic papers, academic journals, and traditional instruction.
Students always seek to cut the learning curve, from CliffsNotes to AI. And our short-form visual world impacts our ability to read walls of text. If instructors cannot or will not keep up with changes, they will be left behind or miss an opportunity to connect in new ways.
But what happens when even small moves into non-traditional formats for instruction are met with high levels of resistance within an institution? “Your method might be effective, but it might also negatively affect your tenure.”
Or what happens when novel methods might not be deemed appropriate or worthy of the craft — in our case, Alex and the participants in our sessions had to decide if they could actually afford to take such a risk.
What should you do then?
On the one hand, you have an obligation as an instructor, a kind of “fiduciary (educational) duty” to your students — to provide them the best education that you can. But on the other hand, what do you do when everyone tells you “No?” And are you effectively wasting your time (and potentially ruining your career) if you say “Yes”?
It’s an open-ended question — one which plagues instructors at all levels.
And the same question, by extension, plagues quite a few areas of business and economics — areas of human endeavor which affect pretty much everyone.
Medium was built on this kind of disruption — opening the door to everyone willing to write. Allowing both people to find their voice, and for readers to find new voices that would have otherwise (under a traditional newspaper, magazine, or journal system) gone completely unheard.
Into the Visual Deep End
Participating in the development of the “comic case” prompted me to reflect on both the constraints and the power of the traditional case method.
While the case method has served generations of students and educators well, the conventional prose format is limited in its capacity to convey hesitation, facial expression, tone, and ambiguity — all of which are central to many difficult human work-related experiences.
Those experiences are not traditionally included in business school curricula — though the recognition of the mental and emotional impact of work on the individual — has changed dramatically in the past few decades. Mental health in the workplace is a topic that is now widely written about and researched.
The comic format provides direct emotional interaction with characters by using images, layout, pacing, setting, context, juxtaposition, and silence.
In doing so, comics engage students on an entirely different level. Comics are not necessarily better than traditional pedagogical approaches, but certainly are more direct and personal.
Using comics also requires writers and instructors to think critically about what is shown, what is implied, and what is deliberately left ambiguous.
Seeing Ourselves in the Panel
As we developed the script and visuals for our project, we realized that each of us had identified different items that we found either inappropriate, offensive, or unhelpful. Markers of social identity that we include in cases are important factors in how readers conceive them and potentially themselves. (Some best practices in case writing).
In our reactions, some of us focused more on the script, while others focused more on the visuals.
This process helped us to bring to the surface our own biases and prejudices in a way that writing really does not.
In a written description, we might have an archetype of a tenured professor in our mind’s eye, but seeing one visually represented encouraged me to reflect on how my unexpressed and unrepresented thoughts affected how I thought about people in positions of power.
In addition, the experience of working in a visual medium prompted greater narrative discipline and a real focus on economy. It is tempting when transcripts and text are now so easy to generate.
A four-page comic allows little room for redundancy or elaboration. It requires one to decide what is essential and to sequence ideas in a way that is both cognitively and emotionally coherent.
Why Format Is Not Just Form
Moreover, the process illuminated a fundamental truth about teaching: format matters. Students respond not only to what we teach but to how it is presented. Cases are not neutral containers; they frame, filter, and focus attention.
As such, the question is not simply whether a comic is effective, but what its use signals about the kind of classroom we wish to create. Students judge us not only on what we are teaching, but also on how it is taught and the tools we use to teach it.
Which brings up the question addressed earlier: have we become too attached to words in an increasingly visual world?
If so, can pedagogical instruction adapt quickly enough to keep pace with the changes?
And even if it can, will gatekeepers and decision makers be open to the kinds of changes required to make those formats available to students?
Are We Listening to the Mammals Yet?
What was interesting about working with comics for the first time was that, regardless of the backgrounds of the case writers, using a “comic case” to teach a subject such as harassment presented several real risks.
Some students view comics as inherently unserious or inappropriate for addressing matters of organizational misconduct.
Others may find visual representations more emotionally intense than prose and react strongly — either in productive or disruptive ways.
Furthermore, most faculty considering this format must contend with institutional skepticism, much as innovators tend to face in settled industries and organizations.
Visual storytelling, though common in many disciplines, is not always regarded as legitimate in management education. Questions around authorship, collaboration with artists, copyright, updating, and assessment further complicate its adoption.
In many ways, the complications of creating a meaningful collaborative art form, such as a comic, are orders of magnitude more difficult than creating a piece of writing.
In a piece of collective writing, someone starts, others chime in, and everyone works on it until everyone agrees — or the person/professor in charge deems the writing of acceptable quality.
American Artist Sol LeWitt said, “Ideas are the machine that makes the art.” With academic writing, that is not always true. But with comics, it almost always is.
Ultimately, the comic format has the potential to have a significant impact on students. It forces students to slow down, interpret the unsaid between panels, and recognize ambiguity rather than expect the prose to resolve it.
It also requires them to toggle between two communication media and two states of being: what is seen, and what is felt. This can be a benefit because it provides an option for alternative types of learning. However, the format can also deter learning for individuals who struggle with viual overload or cannot identify with the characters or topic.
One of the major downsides of comics is that they require an enormous amount of skill and time to get just right so that everyone who reads them understands them instantly.
Then there is the issue of assessment. While a traditional case may be more easily assessed using standard tools, visual storytelling introduces new dimensions of engagement that are harder to evaluate through traditional methods.
We all can appreciate a Gary Larson cartoon from The Far Side:
The comic is instantly understandable. And it makes us laugh.
Perhaps in the context of this article, we can take another message from Larson’s comic as well: times are changing. And teaching methods and academic institutions will have to adapt to survive and remain relevant.
Back to my Knitting with a New Thread
While I remain committed to the traditional case method and its virtues, I am persuaded that exploring alternative formats — carefully, deliberately, and with academic rigor — can sharpen our core practices rather than undermine them.
In the end, the decision to draw the line is less about abandoning what we know how to do and more about expanding how we go about reaching our pedagogical goals. What doors do our formats open or keep shut?
In the process, regardless of format, case writing is about choosing what to show, what to conceal, and how much of ourselves we are willing to show and risk on the page.
But the greater the risks we take, the greater the rewards — both for ourselves as educators, and for the students that we serve.
Format is never neutral. Format frames what we write and teach, how it is received, and ultimately how we have crucial conversations with our students and our peers.
Embracing the changes that the modern world has given us — AI, visual media, alternative learning formats — and using them creatively for the benefit of our students will mean a lasting and meaningful legacy for future generations.
I am ending with one of the most beautiful aspects of technology and platforms, which we love to criticize. It helps us benefit from emotional connections across the world with strangers who suddenly are not. One of them is @emmarosepurposefulpoetry, who blessed me with this poem on our topic:
Connecting’s required with our hearts, minds and eyes,
can help us learn
Comics can do this
Lighthearted
Yet messages boldly are shared, seen, received
Connecting’s required in ways we can feel
© Emma Rose 2025
Thank you for reading!
Resources on case writing: Check out this peek behind the scenes from our case writing and research team here, a post on the case method and engineering disagreement, and a piece on How to Write a Great Business Case. A collection of cases as graphic novels is here.
For ideas on discussing mental health across units in case-based classrooms, see here. Other resources and podcasts on participant-centered learning and mental health at work are on my LinkedIn.
Thank you to Matthew Vernon Hanson for his encouragement and support.
