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

Character Associations

Characters are containers of information. When we use the label hero or a character's name, the audience has a mental model for all the information they receive about the character, including values, actions, relationships, and influence.

When you want to convince an audience of something, you must consider two simple facts. First, if members of the audience must think too hard about your message, they will not absorb it. Second, often audiences are required to understand a lot of factors in order to accept the case for change. These two facts appear to be in conflict, which is precisely why characters are important. As you build up the information about a character, you're developing the information to support the conclusion, and you can keep relating back to this growing body of knowledge through the simple name of the character. What do we know about Luke Skywalker of the Rebel Alliance, Frodo Baggins of Middle Earth, or Joey from the television show Friends? Quite a bit.

Throughout the story, you can build complexity into the character through your description. By the words you use to describe the character and the way he or she responds to the environment, you can channel all this complexity straight into the mind of the audience, and avoid many of the filters of perception we automatically put in the way of absorbing complex information. When you get to the end of the story and the point of climax between the hero and villain, you have a struggle ...