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About this lesson
When it comes to the characters in your stories, don't be abstract - get specific so your audience can visualize and relate.
Quick reference
Characters Make Your Stories Come Alive
Every great story has strong, specific characters. If your story lacks characters your audience can relate to, it won’t land. This lesson focuses on how to build vivid, human characters into your stories — and why you should often be one of them.
Use Real Characters, Not Abstract Groups
- “They” or “customers” is not a character — it’s too vague.
- Instead, name one person. Even if you change the name, make it feel real.
- A great story pulls ideas out of the abstract and makes them concrete.
- When your audience can see the person you're talking about, they connect.
Add Visual and Emotional Detail
- Flesh out characters with just enough detail so your audience can visualize them.
- Include:
- Who they are (role or relationship)
- What they look or act like
- How they felt and what they said or did
- The goal is relatability — your audience should understand why they should care.
Why Characters Matter
- Great movies, books, religions — all have memorable, powerful characters.
- Stories without characters are just concepts or issues.
- To tell a real story, you need specific, named people.
Put Yourself in the Story
- Most of the time, you should be a character in your own story.
- Why?
- It’s easier to tell stories from your own experience.
- You won’t have to “act” or perform — just relive what happened.
- You still need at least one other character, so it’s not just a monologue.
Show Your Humanity
- You don’t have to be the hero — and you shouldn’t always try.
- It’s okay to share what you struggled with or what you did wrong.
- That honesty builds trust and makes your story more impactful.
- If the story is helpful and relevant, you owe it to your audience to include yourself.
- 00:05 Every great story has characters, real characters.
- 00:09 You can see them, taste and feel and touch them.
- 00:13 You need your audience to be able to visualize your character and to relate to them.
- 00:18 So if you talk about they, they is not a character.
- 00:22 If you talk about customers, customers is not a character.
- 00:27 Name 1.
- 00:29 When you really describe and detail a character, you're taking the whole speech, your concepts, out of the realm of the abstract, and you're allowing people to visualize it in the concrete terms.
- 00:41 You need to flesh out all the relevant details of your characters.
- 00:46 Now, sometimes the character is you.
- 00:48 Sometimes another character is going to be your boss, a client, a colleague, a customer.
- 00:54 The more details the better.
- 00:57 Up until a certain point, you need to give enough details so that people can visualize it.
- 01:03 And you need to give people a sense of why they should care about the character, why they should relate to the character.
- 01:10 What does every great movie have?
- 01:12 Strong, powerful characters.
- 01:14 What does every great novel have?
- 01:15 Strong, powerful characters.
- 01:17 What does every prominent religion have?
- 01:19 Strong, powerful characters.
- 01:22 So when you're telling your story, you've got to 1st isolate who are the characters in this story.
- 01:29 It's not managers, it's not a company, It's always specific individuals.
- 01:37 Sorry, but we got to talk a little more about characters because I see so many of my students in in person workshops around the country and around the world want to gloss over that.
- 01:46 They want to go right into the issue, right into the concept.
- 01:51 Give your character a name, A real name, preferably.
- 01:54 If it's a client or customer, you can change the name so you're not violating any confidentiality.
- 02:01 But give the person a name.
- 02:03 It's easier for your audience to relate to it.
- 02:07 Describe in detail.
- 02:09 Your audience needs to understand why they should relate to this character.
- 02:13 Why should they care about this character?
- 02:16 Remember, if your story doesn't have characters in it, it's not really a story.
- 02:22 It's just talking about stuff.
- 02:26 Should one of the characters in your story be you?
- 02:32 I have to stress, most of the time for most people, you're going to be better off if you are one of the characters.
- 02:38 Frankly, it's easier for you because you're just reliving an actual experience, and it takes you away from trying to put on a show or a theatrical performance reliving someone else's story.
- 02:51 You don't have to be a character in every single story, but most of the time that should be your default position.
- 02:59 Now you have to have another character.
- 03:01 It can't be just you.
- 03:03 You have to describe in detail other characters, but let people know how you were feeling.
- 03:09 That should be easy.
- 03:10 Let people know what your problem was, what were you trying to overcome, what were the challenges that you faced.
- 03:18 All of this plays into really describing yourself as one of the characters in this story.
- 03:25 Now, you don't have to make yourself out as the hero.
- 03:28 You certainly don't want to always make yourself out to be wonderful and fantastic.
- 03:34 You can describe your flaws.
- 03:36 You can describe what you did wrong too.
- 03:40 But don't shy away from yourself because you think that's too bragging or that's too egocentric.
- 03:48 No, if you're telling a story and it's relevant and helpful to the audience, and it involves you, you're doing your audience a disservice by not telling them your story.
- 04:01 So make yourself a character in most of your stories.
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