Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations

11

Character

“To create great characters, think of all your characters as part of a web in which each helps define the others.”

John Truby, screenwriter, director and screenwriting teacher

A character is no more a human being than the Venus de Milo is a real woman. A character is a work of art, a metaphor for human nature.

Robert McKee, screenwriting lecturer and author of the screenwriters' bible: Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting

Business thinking is full of abstractions and the turning of specific situations into generalizations. It is the way many people are taught how to work. Instead of looking at improving the process for a person, we look at the process for everyone doing a similar role. Instead of creating a small application for one person to create and record invoices, we build finance systems and document-sharing platforms for enterprises. This is how economies of scale work, and it's totally appropriate when looking at what to change and how to make investments.

But it's hard to get passionate about an abstraction, or a generalization.

The characters in a story need to be individuals who the audience can identify with, not broad generalizations. In Chapter 8, we discussed how you can create personas that represent specific roles. These personas need details that make them real and specific. They need weaknesses, personal desires, and specific issues to deal with. A persona needs to be representative of the strengths and weaknesses ...