In this 21st session of the StorySpark series, Haritosh Srivastav leads an interactive exercise focused on character analysis. He asks participants to select a personal story—any setback or success—and list every character, detailing name, age, gender, occupation, physical traits, goals, hopes, fears, and their significance to the narrative. Venkat shares a childhood school experience, describing himself as a shy three‑year‑old, his young teacher, and his mother, and later recounts Haritosh’s own anecdote about a cricket‑playing incident involving his aunt, cousin, and himself, highlighting each character’s traits and impact. The session emphasizes that understanding characters deeply makes storytelling clearer and more powerful, and encourages viewers to apply the profiling framework in their own stories and share their work.
Chapters
Aasam, so welcome to day 21 of StorySpark session. We are in the week 4 of story elements, and today's exercise will again be one of the deep dive into one of the aspect, which is characters. And stories doesn't hold anything if there are no characters, so we need to always think about what are characters So today's exercise is going to be all about different characters in our story. So what we are going to do is we're going to actually look at any of your story, and I can give some example, but this exercise is all about yourself. So that is why I am not going to show any video, anything, but I want you to think about one of your own stories and think about the characters in the story. You can think about who are the characters and take any of the story. It could be, it could be any setback that you face, it could be any success you have, anything. And think about the various characters and just analyze the different characters of the story. Sometimes we don't give much attention to who are the people, who are the character in the story. So this is why once we complete the exercise, I want you to tell the story in couple of lines, not the whole story, but just mention who are the characters in your story, as in the name, age, gender, occupation, whatever detail you can think about. And also some other physical trait like what is the height, weight, skin color, any other thing. What are their traits? What is their goal? What is the hopes, dreams? Their fears and worries, and what is their significance in this story. So let's do the exercise for 2 minutes, and then we'll be circle to discuss. Alright, so did you do the exercise, Venkat?
Yes.
Okay, go ahead and tell us a bit about story, not the whole story, but then tell us who are the characters and their traits, their hopes, their fears, etc.
Yes, I will share little story, uh, from that I will share the character, everything. At my age 3, I was so cute and chubby. My parents enrolled me in school, LKG. In that, I was always keep like this. I didn't up my face. One month over, two months over, my miss called my parents and informed that your son Venkat is not capable to capture things, so better you enroll in Tamil medium school, government school. There the teacher force him and teach in different way, and he would learn from easily them. We cannot teach here because here are all soft things. So that's the story.
Okay, so who were the characters in the story?
I am—
you are one of the characters. So tell us about your own characteristic.
I was quiet and always, uh, Head down and, um, don't speak in school. But I was energetic in home.
Energetic home, yes. Okay, what else? Who else? Sorry, so you were 3 years old, you are quiet and shy, you are not very active in the class. Okay, which are the other characters?
Me, my teacher Miss, and my mom.
Okay, so tell a little bit about them.
That my teacher age is around 20, so At that age, how to express Haritosh Srivastav?
Yeah, so she is 20 years old, young, young teacher, and maybe not sure how to handle different types of kids. Yes, right. And, and what was the significance for her to be in the story?
She didn't have a growth mindset and develop all the students.
So yeah, she still had a lot of journey to take. Awesome, thank you. And as we say, story power to you. I hope you're trying to understand that when you understand the characters in the story, it becomes so much easier to express. So I'll— like, like you, I also take this story of me in the childhood with one of the distant relative and her mother trying to play cricket. And she— give me a second— and she comes back and starts shouting, don't waste the time, and this guy is not going to do anything. So at that time, I think the main characters in that story is one is myself, I'm about 8 or 9 years old, from small town. I'm studying from Hindi medium, and I'm not, I'm not sure about my future either because, you know, you know, when you're coming from a non-English background, you are always unsure. You have this inferiority complex. And then you have the cousin, which we don't get much into detail, but the third one is the aunt who's about 40 years old or something. She's short, she has a shrill voice, and she wants the best for her son. That is true, but in the process she becomes mean to other people, and especially people who are from non-English speaking background. And yeah, the significance of her that, no, I, I did take it as a challenge on myself to be successful. And in a way, she became, you know, a disguised angel in our journey, as they say. So that's pretty much it. So yep, what is your learning out of this exercise?
Um, yeah, hereafter I would emphasize on character and in a deep way, because I am not sharing exactly the this color or quality, character. So hereafter I will add that in my story.
Awesome, thank you. Story power to you. So that it was day 21, thinking from the perspective of different characters, understanding even if you're not expressing everything, understanding that, no, who they are, what are their traits, what are their hopes, dreams, fears, and things like that, and also understanding their significance. So thank you so much. Thank you, Venkat, for showing up, and thank you if you are watching it on a video. I still want you to think about the characters, and if you want to create a video, post it in the group or as a comment on our YouTube channel. I'll see you tomorrow, and as I say, until next time, Keep learning, keep growing, and keep going out of your comfort zone. Thank you so much. And this is how I would like to celebrate my birthday, by doing these sessions and having great fun with the community. Thank you so much.
