One of the things I’ve learned as an amateur fiction writer is that there’s a type of character arc in the creative process that most people don’t know about. It’s a strange type of character development.
When you start writing a story, you have an idea about your main character. She’s single, about 30. She’s brilliant and has a biting wit. She’s somewhere between plain and ugly, but she’s a well-paid leg model, and she’s bitter at God for her draw in the genetic lottery.
As the writer builds this character, he thinks he’s creating her, but he soon realizes that the character starts to take on a life of her own. The process of creating the character imports the avatars of a host of other characters, archetypes, myths, legends, and even snatches of song lyrics or TV commercials.
The new character is partly Marian Halcombe (from The Woman in White). She’s got a touch of the evil stepsister and a dash of the fairy-tale witch. She’s the rejected queen, the tragic heroine, and the proud intellectual. She can relate to “At Seventeen” by Janis Ian, but she’s also Nancy Drew and Enola Holmes.
As the writer creates the character, he’s drawing on the stories all of us live inside on a daily basis. Those stories inform (or distort) everything we know, see, and hear.
The character takes over
The writer isn’t creating something new so much as adjusting the presets. He’s riffing on a melody that resonates with the audience — or perhaps more precisely, with the culture.
A whole collection of characters, attitudes, stereotypes, and unarticulated feelings glom on to this “new” character the writer “creates.” She starts to take on a life of her own, and the writer is no longer the creator, but the servant.
At first, this sounds absurd. The character is an imaginary construction. Surely the writer can make her do whatever he wants.
He can’t. A writer who did that would lose his audience, because the readers swim in a cultural mega-story that creates expectations and sets boundaries. The readers have all those characters and stereotypes in their heads as well. The writer can’t suddenly leap out of that universe and retain any credibility. The character has acquired a nature and the writer has to respect it.
Writing such a character can be a very strange experience. Sometimes it’s as if the muse takes over and the writer is just a typist.
As a practical example of the limitations on a writer, dragons don’t have any real characteristics, but if you’re going to write about dragons, you have to know what they’re like. There’s variation within limits, but if you create a dragon that eats ice cream sandwiches, you’re not talking the story seriously.
Business isn’t fiction, and it doesn’t usually involve dragons, but there are some lessons we can apply.
What this means for business storytelling
Storytelling is big these days in marketing, branding, sales, and even in the news. This is good. It shows that we’re coming to recognize the fact that man is a storytelling animal, and we’re drawn to stories like yellow jackets are drawn to your can of soda at a summer picnic.
This contrasts with how I learned things as a young professional. “Features and benefits” were drilled into my head when I worked in regulatory publishing. That’s not bad — it’s an important mental model to keep in mind — but it overlooks something equally important. Buyers aren’t purely rational beings who evaluate technical specs or weigh pros and cons.
In business storytelling and in writing a novel you start with a fixed idea, but the story takes on a life of its own as it develops.
Think of Flo from the progressive commercials. If you were hired to write a commercial with Flo, you wouldn’t be creating her, you’d be channeling her, and she might take your concept in a way you didn’t expect.
The novelist doesn’t create a character in a vacuum, and the marketer doesn’t create a customer or a brand in a vacuum.
Your customer already has fears, aspirations, heroes, villains, and some idea what success and failure look like. You’re not creating a wave. You’re trying to surf it.
A publisher may think he’s selling information, but the customer thinks he’s trying to become a wise citizen, a successful executive, a good parent, or a respected member of his community.
Those are all very different stories.
The question isn’t “What story should I tell?” so much as “What story is my customer already trying to live?”
Hint: That story is far more important than statistics or demographics.
Story over demographics
Demographics tell you who someone is on paper. Story tells you who they believe themselves to be.
You may have seen the meme comparing the demographics of Ozzy Osbourne and King Charles. Both are male, born in 1948, raised in the UK, married twice, rich, and famous. But they live in completely different worlds and occupy different narrative universes.
The smart business storyteller isn’t targeting a demographic. He’s targeting a character type.
We need to get past the “GenX is this way” approach and find the story that infuses, surrounds, and defines the life of our customers.
As an example, entrepreneurs aren’t all of the same sort. Some are explorers. Some are builders, or craftsmen.
A homebrewing friend decided to go commercial. He wanted to brew beers that broke the mold. When he asked my advice I suggested he focus on beers that people want to drink. But that wasn’t his style. He was more the rebel than the guy who’s ruled by surveys and spreadsheets.
He went his own way, and his company is doing fantastic.
Learn the stories, the heroes, the archetypes, and the villains that ring in your audience’s ears and write to those stories.
Conclusion
The novelist eventually learns that he’s not the master of his characters. He works within a cultural inheritance larger than himself, and the characters take on their own creative force.
The business storyteller faces the same reality.
Customers arrive with their own stories. They already have heroes and villains, and they want to be the hero. They already know what success looks like, and they want to succeed. They know what kind of person they are trying to become.
The storyteller’s job is to learn that and speak to it. Not invent it.
The outline of the story already exists. Your task as a business storyteller is to discover where your product, your company, and your brand fit within the stories in which your customers live, then craft a compelling riff on that story that resonates with your audience and empowers them to be the hero they want to be.
Final thought. I remember a good friend telling me that he and his wife chose which minivan to buy because of the cup holders. They were so adjustable they could secure a baby bottle or a Big Gulp.
Human brains aren’t wired for facts and figures. We’re wired for story. My friend was trying to reconcile the story of his daily life with this big purchase. The transmission seemed less significant than having a good place to put the baby’s bottle.
