CHAPTER FIVE
Develop Relatable Characters
First Attempt
Dayna reads through the short paragraph she has typed and retyped a dozen times. She mumbles the words audibly: “This is a story about phishing and how to respond to an email containing attachments or links. An employee of our company received an email from a friend—or at least it appeared to be from a friend. In the email, the friend asked the employee to click on a link in the email that would take them to a webpage containing some great store coupons. The employee is about to click the link when the employee realized that the email might not be from a friend after all. It could be from a scammer. Our policy regarding protection of our company systems states, ‘Be aware that emails containing malware pose a threat to our company systems.’”
“OK,” Dayna nods, “Not bad. Let’s see what Susan thinks about it.” She composes an email to the director of compliance and attaches her first—actually her thirteenth—attempt at writing a cybersecurity story for the compliance course.
At the end of the day, she receives a response.
“Dayna, thank you for giving the story a try. It’s heading in the right direction. Maybe give the employee a name? Let’s talk tomorrow.”
“That’s it? Nice try? I give up! What does she expect? War and Peace?” Dayna says to herself. She grabs a copy of her story and heads out. It’s Question Mark Grill night.
“So how’s the story coming?” James asks.
“I knew you were going to ask me that.” Dayna slumps into the booth seat across from him. “I brought it with me.”
“Oh, good. Let me see!” Dayna takes a folded piece of paper out of her tote bag and hands it to James. “My masterpiece,” she mutters. She feels intimidated putting her scrap of a story into the hands of someone who acts out stories on the stage almost every weekend. But with a meeting with Susan the next day, she needs some perspective.
James reads it silently. Dayna searched his face for a clue. Does he think it’s good? He looks up and asks, “Has the compliance director read this yet?”
Dayna looks away, “Yeah.”
“And? What did she say?”
Dayna rolls her eyes. “Basically she said, ‘Nice try, don’t call us, we’ll call you.’”
James chuckles. “No, really, what did she say?”
“She wants to meet tomorrow and talk about it. What do you think about it? The story.”
“That’s all she said?”
“Pretty much, so what do you think?”
James looks down at the creased paper. “Well, you might start by giving the employee a name.”
“That’s exactly what Susan said!”
“I thought you said … “ James starts.
Dayna interrupts, “I was trying to make it like, you know, like a character that could be anybody!”
“Anybody has a name,” says James.
“I know that! But, OK, if I give this person a name, it might be too … “ Dayna isn’t sure what she wants to say. “I really don’t think I’m cut out for this. I’m not a novelist.”
“I doubt the compliance director is expecting the course to win a Pulitzer Prize. Giving the character a name will just make them more real,” he suggests.
Dayna knows he’s right. “Alright, what do I name her? Mary? Beth? … Jamie?”
James swoons. “Would you really name your leading woman after me?”
“If you’re not nice to me, I will,” she says.
“Oh, come on, Dayna, it’s not that bad! It just needs action.”
Dayna is a little more defensive than she means to be. “You don’t think my story has action? What about when she’s about to click the link? That was kind of scary.” Dayna looks at James.
James grins. “Yeah, I was on the edge of my seat when the employee realized it was a scammer!” He fakes screams, “No! Not the store coupons trick!”
They both laugh. James tilts his head. “How many women work for your company?”
Dayna is still smiling. “What?”
“Well you keep calling this character a woman. I was curious why.”
“Not many, actually.”
“Not many women work at your company?”
“I actually know the percentage.” She smiles. “I did my homework. Our company is 70 percent men.”
“Look at you! So, maybe the character’s name should be Eric, instead of Mary … or Jamie.”
“Eric? No way!” James isn’t following. “I knew an Eric once.” Dayna pauses. “Nevermind. Eric isn’t right.”
James smiles, “Alright, what would you name him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Josh?” he asks.
“No.”
“Ricardo?”
“No.”
“Archibald?”
“No!”
“Why not?” asks James.
“Too uppity. The guys in this company are straightforward. Analytical, you know?”
“OK, so what’s a straightforward analytical name?”
Dayna thinks a minute, then nods. “Steve.”
“Steve.” James smiles. “Nice! What else about these guys do you know?”
“Well, I did make this audience profile thing, at your suggestion. They value innovation, for sure. They’re pretty good at navigating change, ’cause it’s happening all the time. The company got this third-party vendor that’s handling the help desk, which nobody is thrilled with. People avoid calling the help desk at all costs … including me,” she interjects. “I’m not sure what this has to do with training, but I also made a note that they like football and baseball … ”
“That is so impressive, Dayna! Do you know what you’re doing?” Dayna shakes her head. “Character analysis!” He throws up his arms. “In reverse! This is exactly what I was talking about. You can use this audience profile to write characters!”
“I can’t write characters that look like everybody!”
“But you can write characters that everybody can relate to! Right? Characters aren’t look-alikes, they’re people we understand. I mean if 70 percent of the company fits your description, then everybody knows someone like that! And maybe there’s more characters that reach the rest of your audience!” James was half standing, leaning over the table towards Dayna. “Get it?”
Dayna laughs at her friend. “Yes, I get it.”
“So, what kind of character would your audience relate to?” He sits down. “Who is Steve, besides straightforward and analytical?”
Dayna thinks. She really thinks about it. “I’m not sure. I haven’t been with the company very long and I don’t interact with employees in operational areas that much.” She looks at James. “I don’t know.”
“OK, let’s start with this: Is Steve a coupon collector?” asks James.
“Hm?” Dayna doesn’t catch what James is getting at.
“Your character, Steve? Would he really be tempted by a link to store coupons?”
“Oh, yeah … no. OK, I think I see where you’re going.”
“What does your audience profile say about him?” he presses.
Dayna looks up. “Um, I guess something about engineering might be better?” Dayna is prepared to talk more, but James is looking past her. He’s thinking. Of something, probably devious. Then he looks at Dayna.
“I’m teaching an acting class at the Boys and Girls Club this Saturday at two. Can you come?”
That’s the last thing Dayna expects James to say. “What? What’s that got to do … “
“Tell me you’ll come!” James interrupts.
“OK, sure,” Dayna stumbles, “But … ”
“Great! You work on Steve and I’ll see you Saturday!” James gets up.
Dayna has to smile at her friend’s dramatic departure. Never a dull moment. Her mind drifts back to her pending meeting with Susan the next day. What is she going to say?
Jumping-Off Point
Coming out of the Discover phase you will have a long list of actions that need to be trained. If you feel like Dayna, staring at your analysis wondering how to make a story out of it, you are not alone. But by now, you know that you are not starting with an empty stage. The Discover chapters helped you identify your audience and what you need them to do. This is your jumping off point. Let’s take that information and translate it into the two essential story elements: relatable characters in strong conflict. In this chapter, we begin with relatable characters (Figure 5-1).
Figure 5-1. Relatable Characters in the Story Design Model
Start With Discovery
No matter what size audience, you have to choose the characters in your story based on the audience profile. There are some guideposts in designing characters for your story that will help keep you on track. Dayna has already started creating a character—Steve—for the cybersecurity story. At this point, though, Steve is just a name. Dayna uses the audience profile of the company to create an individual character that employees can relate to (Figure 5-2).
Figure 5-2. Dayna’s Audience Profile and Action List for Cybersecurity
Guideposts for Character Descriptions
Your goal is to describe characters your audience can relate to. After reading through Dayna’s case study, characters and plot lines may already be formulating in your mind. That’s great! Act on those instincts and use the following guideposts to help shape them into characters that best contribute to the goal of training this audience: Detect phishing attempts and take appropriate action.
Their Position
Dayna chooses to set the story in her company’s office. Since one of the largest departments in the company is engineering, she chooses to make her character an engineer.
Naming the person’s position in the story is not always necessary, but it’s a good place to begin a character description. If your audience is an enterprise-wide audience, choose a position that many in the company will either occupy themselves or know someone who does.
Their Conflict
This is the most useful of the guideposts. Look back at the action list. The main action is to Protect the company’s information from scammers. Underneath it are three sub-actions. Imagine the character (the engineer) in conflict with one of those three actions. For instance, Dayna could pair her engineer with action 1:
Scan emails for common phishing clues using the Phishing Clues job aid
Building strong conflict will be addressed in detail in the next chapter, but already you can see how matching up your characters to be in conflict with one (or more) of the actions on your action list helps define who they are.
Take a moment and think about the engineer. He struggles to scan emails for common phishing clues. Write a short list of adjectives or nouns that describe the engineer based on this new information.
Dayna may describe him as:
• busy
• an innovator
• preoccupied
• a workaholic
• impetuous
• a go-getter.
The engineer in this story could be a busy innovator, a preoccupied workaholic, or an impetuous go-getter. You can imagine any of these characters struggling to take time to scan emails for phishing clues. The stories would be very different, but the character of the engineer is in alignment with the action list and, therefore, reinforces the outcome of training.
Dayna chooses to be conservative and make her character a busy innovator, which seems to capture the spirit of the problem. It’s not that this audience is intentionally disregarding compliance. They’re just busy with other things and scanning emails for phishing clues is not at the top of their minds.
By simply putting the character in conflict with an action on the list, describing the character becomes easier. In her final story about the engineer, Dayna will strive to put him in conflict with all three sub-actions. For now, though, the conflict with action 1 has helped shape the character.
Their Peers
Dayna starts with a simple story that involves only one character, the engineer. In a moment, we’ll look at her characters for the privacy story, which will involve two people. In the practice session, you’ll also create two characters. When you have two or more characters, view them as a cast of peers, with contrasting personalities. There may be occasions where two toxic people need to battle it out in your story, but not usually. You want to aim for balance in your stories. Rely on your experience as a daily consumer and teller of stories to guide you toward that right balance and contrast in your cast of characters.
Demographics should also play a role in balance. Depending on your audience profile, you will want to cast characters with the appropriate ratio of women and men, young and old and in-between, and the spectrum of cultural backgrounds. Dayna already has a man in mind for this character, which seems appropriate, given that 70 percent of the company is male.
Their Appearance and Mannerisms
Brief physical descriptions can be helpful, especially if you plan to develop the story using pictures, video, or animation. Dayna describes her engineer as:
• broad-shouldered and tall
• high energy.
Dayna doesn’t need much in this category to picture in her mind who the engineer is. Even if these physical attributes don’t make it into the story exactly as she initially imagines it, it will help her to connect with the character more concretely as she writes the story.
So far, Dayna can describe her character as:
An engineer, a busy innovator, tall with broad shoulders, high energy.
She’s getting there.
Build in More Detail Using the Audience Profile
In chapter 3, you narrowed the audience profile down to eight key pieces of information. Five of these attributes will act as further guideposts to help describe the character:
1. personal information
2. values
3. current circumstances at work
4. reaction to current circumstances at work
5. fears.
Personal Information
The character’s personal history with the company may be helpful and relevant to the story’s action. Are they a new hire? Have they been with the company for 20 years? Did they leave the organization for a few years and have recently come back? Mentioning a personal outside activity in the story can be a point of connection with your audience, as long as it’s related to the conflict of the story.
Dayna looks at the personal information of her audience profile to gain inspiration for her character’s description:
• He loves sports, and is a former football player at a local high school.
• He’s high energy.
• He’s married and has a seven-year-old son.
Knowing that Dayna’s character loves sports, has high energy, and is married and has a seven-year-old son may help move the plot forward. For instance, it may help Dayna narrow in on what kind of phishing email would be a temptation. Since he loves sports, perhaps the lure to make him click the link is free tickets to a game or coupons for sports equipment. Including personal information in the character description is not always necessary, but it is helpful when the story involves outside influences.
Values
You don’t need to dive deeply into the psyche of your characters, but it’s helpful to know how their values affect their behaviors. Behaviors equal action. Dayna looks at the values of her audience and feels that her character’s values would likely align with innovation. This is how she describes it:
• values fast innovation
• works hard and plays hard.
Imagine this character coming into contact with a phishing email. He’s got email pouring in and a phishing email advertising something he loves comes across his desk. He’s going to make decisions based on his values. For instance, if he’s a fast innovator, he may make hasty decisions, which is great for some things, but not when it comes to scanning emails for phishing clues. Someone who values detailed accuracy is probably not going to be tempted to click a link in a phishing email in the same way as this character who values fast innovation. Remember, values show themselves through action. So, if you have the opportunity to observe the audience you’re designing for, write down their actions. Their actions should reveal their true values regardless of the words painted on the corporate wall.
Let’s add personal information and values to the character description.
An engineer, a busy innovator, tall with broad shoulders, high energy, married and has a seven-year-old son. He’s been with the company for five years, loves sports, former football player at a local high school. Values fast innovation, works hard and plays hard.
Are you beginning to know who this man is? Is the character description sparking ideas for action?
Their Current Circumstances and Reactions to Current Circumstances at Work
These two items from the audience profile work in tandem. Each of your characters is immersed in the same work environment, producing different reactions. Draw from the audience profile to define those circumstances for the story. In the audience profile, Dayna notes the following circumstances and the employees’ reactions to them (Figure 5-3).
Figure 5-3. Circumstances and Employee Reactions
The reactions your audience has on the job hint at plot lines, but they can also inform your character descriptions. For instance, Dayna can assign a couple of these actions to her character:
• has only met with his manager once since the reorg three months ago
• never calls the help desk for computer problems; tries to fix things himself.
Now Dayna’s character is even more connected with the audience profile. His reactions to circumstances in the story will seem familiar and real to life.
Their Fears
If you are able to pinpoint the fears of your audience, it can also help define the characters. Dayna’s audience fears that their new product will fail. For Dayna’s character, this fear is in direct opposition to what he values most—innovation. This fear may be felt more by some in the organization than others, but as a result, they are concerned about being sidetracked from their focus on innovation and customer service. Compliance is sometimes perceived as a hinderance to innovation and they struggle to complete compliance training on time. Fear is a powerful motivation for taking action—or not taking action. For Dayna’s character, if the fear of a product failing trumps taking time away from innovation to scan an email for phishing clues, it’s going to affect the decisions he makes. Also, because compliance training is not a priority for this group, it’s likely that when they finally do take the course, they are rushing through it at the last minute.
Let’s add the character’s reaction to current circumstances and his fears to the character’s description:
An engineer, a busy innovator, tall with broad shoulders, high energy, married and has a seven-year-old son. He’s been with the company for five years, loves sports, former football player at a local high school. Values fast innovation, works hard and plays hard. He’s only met with his manager once since the reorg three months ago. Never calls the help desk for computer problems; tries to fix things himself. Fears being delayed or distracted from his work.
Fears provide an excellent source of internal conflict, which you’ll learn more about in the next chapter.
Their Backstory
This is not a novel. Let me repeat that. This is not a novel. You do not need to create a long, detailed history for your characters. Unless you are creating a series of stories that follows a character through their life and career, keep the backstory for your characters limited to the following details:
• education
• social interactions
• relevant family details.
Keep these questions in mind as you consider backstory details:
• Does it relate to the action of the story and contribute to the conflict?
• Is it reflective of the audience profile?
If so, it may be worthy of including in your character description. Take a look at some of the backstory descriptions below. Which ones seem extraneous for Dayna’s character and which ones seem possibly relevant?
• Finished his four-year engineering degree in two and a half years.
• Loves coaching his son’s Little League baseball team.
• Plays pool with his former college friends every second Tuesday of the month.
• Fourth-born of five children (all boys).
That he plays pool with his former college friends and is the fourth-born in his family are interesting facts that may ultimately have influenced who he has become, but these have little to do with the action of the story. If it helps you to know these details, go for it, but they aren’t necessary for designing a story for training. Your audience certainly doesn’t need to know this information to benefit from the story. Knowing that he finished his four-year engineering degree in two and a half years sheds light on this man’s drive to get things done and may be useful to you as you write the plot. His love for coaching his son’s Little League baseball team seems like it could be extraneous, but Dayna includes it anyway.
Backstory is generally for your own benefit as you describe your characters. Usually this information will not make it into the story, though occasionally it will. Dayna will draw upon this category for her final story.
Their Name
Often, people who are designing stories for training will ask this question: “How do you come up with a name?” To answer this, go back to the character description. If you’ve used the guideposts for describing your character, you have a nice description of who your character is. Take a look at the description of Dayna’s character:
An engineer, a busy innovator, tall with broad shoulders, high energy, married and has a seven-year-old son. He’s been with the company for five years, loves sports, former football player at a local high school. Values fast innovation, works hard and plays hard. He’s only met with his manager once since the reorg three months ago. Never calls the help desk for computer problems; tries to fix things himself. Fears being delayed or distracted from his work. Finished his four-year degree in two and a half years, loves coaching his son’s Little League baseball team.
Without thinking too hard, what would you name this character? Seriously, stop and think about it before reading on. What would you name him?
What did you come up with? Chad? Michael “The Truck” Thornton? Livingston? You likely came up with something completely different but it felt right to you. Why? What inspired that name? Sometimes, it’s because the description reminds you of a certain person in your life. If your inspiration is running low, read the description to someone else and ask them to offer a name suggestion. Visit a baby names site and read through until you land on the right one.
Let the character description determine the name. Don’t force it. Just let the name happen. As crazy as it sounds, you instinctively know when someone has slapped a name on a character that doesn’t fit. It’s contrived, and you feel it.
Dayna adds a name to the character description:
Steve, an engineer, a busy innovator, tall with broad shoulders, high energy, married and has a seven-year-old son. He’s been with the company for five years, loves sports, former football player at a local high school. Values fast innovation, works hard and plays hard. He’s only met with his manager once since the reorg three months ago. Never calls the help desk for computer problems; tries to fix things himself. Fears being delayed or distracted from his work. Finished his four-year degree in two and a half years, loves coaching his son’s Little League baseball team.
That wasn’t so bad, right? The guideposts for character descriptions are there for you to use as you need them. It maximizes the use of the audience profile to create characters that your audience will truly relate to. Dayna’s Steve character is fully fleshed out and ready to be cast in the story. That takes care of the character for the cybersecurity story, but Dayna has more characters to create for the privacy story.
In her conversation with Randall, Dayna discovered that 95 percent of the privacy issues were happening in customer service. So Dayna creates a separate audience profile that captures unique information about that department. Figure 5-4 is her audience profile, training goal, and action list for the privacy training.
Figure 5-4. Customer Service Audience Profile
Dayna uses the guideposts to create two characters for the privacy story (Figure 5-5).
Figure 5-5. Dayna’s Characters for Privacy Story
Dayna’s characters for the privacy story have taken shape. Notice the contrast between the two character descriptions. Some of the contrasts pair well together for a positive outcome: caretaker and learner, mentor and mentee, Jasmine fears letting the customer down while Andrew fears letting Jasmine down. Other contrasts form natural conflict: bouncy versus serious, customer care versus thoroughness, focuses on one call at a time versus puts lots of pressure on himself. Dayna has a nice balance between her two characters. And both descriptions were inspired by one audience profile.
Characters Are Real People
The above cast of characters are based on an audience profile of real people. Your characters need to be real too with real personalities, strengths, weaknesses, and life experiences. Characters are not mirror images of your audience, but they must be relatable, especially at an emotional level. Your audience needs to connect with your characters.
Periodically, during a workshop, someone may give their characters names like Chatty Patty, Kyle Klutz, or Gary Go-Getter. Inevitably, these humorous names end up diluting the power of the story. The rest of the story is usually convincing. The names just get in the way. As soon as they become Patty, Kyle, and Gary, they’re more relatable.
That doesn’t mean that larger-than-life characters and character types don’t have a place in stories for training. Television sitcoms are known for a cast of stock characters who are always the same in every episode. They are fairly two-dimensional. And it works! This can work in training as well. I created a comic series for a compliance course that involved a cast of stick figures. They were constantly causing compliance havoc. In every episode, employees who took the training knew how each character was going to behave. The trick, however, is that the stick figure characters were acting out actual case studies that had been reported through the compliance hotline. So their antics were founded upon reality, not outlandish, unrealistic imaginations. They became so popular among employees that compliance training found a fresh, positive identity. It actually changed the way people approached compliance training—with anticipation, rather than dread. So if you choose to use stock characters, be sure to ground their conflict in the action list and steer clear of stereotypes that may offend your learners.
The purpose of creating relatable characters is so that your audience connects with them, cares about them, identifies with them. Use these guideposts to write your character descriptions. You’ll hit the mark with your audience and immediately engage them with the story. Use the Character Description Worksheet in the appendix 1 for your next project.
Figure 5-6. Character Description Worksheet From Instructional Story Design Plan
The editable Character Description Worksheet is available at needastory.com/book-resources.
PRACTICE STORY DESIGN:
Create Relatable Characters
You know the staff at Well Adjusted pretty well by now. You’ve spent a good amount of time with the owner. You’ve settled on a training goal. You’ve collected data about your audience and structured an action list. Now it’s time to use your analysis to create some relatable characters!
Use the training goal and audience profile from the work you did in chapter 3 and the action list you structured in chapter 4 to create characters for your training story. Write this information in the space below before continuing.
Since there are four main areas in the clinic—front desk, back office, examination rooms, and therapy bay—you’ll have four basic staff positions to choose from: front desk staff, back office staff, doctors, and therapists. Create two characters from two different areas of the clinic. Use the guideposts to help walk you through the process of creating two relatable characters based on your audience profile. Put each of the characters in conflict with a different action from the action list and develop their descriptions in contrast to one another.
In appendix 3, you’ll find the completed Instructional Story Design Plan, which may help if you need inspiration. Enjoy this fun step.
When you’re finished, read through the descriptions and do a gut check. Do they feel like real people? Do you see potential for conflict by putting these two people in the same room together? If not, where does it feel contrived or out of alignment with the audience profile? Also, note which guideposts gave you the most insight into the characters. You will continue writing the story using these characters. For fun, you may want to check out the completed Instructional Story Design Plan to see some other character options. Next, you’ll put these characters into action!
| Guidepost | Character 1 | Character 2 |
| Position | |
|
| Conflict | |
|
| Peers | |
|
| Appearance | |
|
| Personal information | |
|
| Values | |
|
| Reaction to current circumstances | |
|
| Fears | |
|
| Backstory | |
|
| Name | |
|