Ep. 209 Why Name Your Characters?

Aaron Lacroix, my friend Mark.

One of the biggest mistakes, I think it was almost everyone at our event. And hey, if you're not aware, it's not really a mistake. You didn't know. However, our job as your podcast host, as your favorite presentation podcast hosts, is to create that awareness. And that's our goal, is to be your favorite. That you don't want to miss an episode, Mark, because if you miss a.

Week, you miss a lot.

Nice, Nice. So we see this over and over again, that people just talk about the characters and sometimes they name the characters, but we want to go a little deeper and help the audience see the characters.

Let's do this.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the unforgettable presentations podcast with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown.

Mark Brown, your life tells a story and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time. Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation. AHAs. Let's dive right in.

Yes. Mark Brown, why name your characters? We've talked about this before, but I think when we see recurring mistakes that are easily fixed, we love to bring that up and let's talk about it again. So we'll take a slightly different angle. But Mark Brown, why name your characters?

Well, a couple of reasons. You know, we hear about my sister, my wife, my son, and we don't know who they are. First of all, I have learned that when you use a name, the audience mentally makes a connection, unless the name is very, very unique. If I say a Josh, most people know who a Josh is or an Andrew. And if I say my son Andrew or I say my 14 year old son Andrew, I stack on enough characteristics to a name and they connect that to a child they may know in their family or neighborhood who is a 14 year old kid named Andrew. It just helps the audience to connect with the character quickly in a way that's more meaningful and more personal than him, the guy next door or my son. It just gives us one more level of intimacy with that character.

Yes. And if there is someone you don't want to use their actual name because maybe it's a family member or maybe there was an issue or a challenge, or for legal purposes, you could use the Ed Tate idea of an adjective name. In one of his stories he has Officer Friendly and Strictly business and average Joe. We can picture all of them. So is there an Adjective, name. If you don't want to use a literal name and you can change the person's name. Remember, one of the ideas that we teach is the emotional truth of the story. Not the literal truth, the emotional truth. But when you name your characters and name all of them. But also, let's not have too many of them. We want to condense our characters so it's simpler and easier for our audience to follow the bouncing ball. Because, yeah, unlike the cartoon songs of our youth where they played a song and they had the lyrics and the ball bounced on the word as they were singing it. Follow the bouncing ball. Your audience does not have the benefit of a bounce bouncing ball. And we also just had a situation where one of the person's name that was being used was very similar to the name of the person who was the hero or the main character of the story. And so they were so similar that the audience and myself included got confused, going, but wait, was it, Was it.

Yeah, Rebecca. Was it Joan or Gene or Jane? And the thing is, we make. We may smile about this, Darren, but you know what? The individual who had that situation did not realize that they had used two names that were so close. And both characters were interacting during one of the scenes in her presentation. We have Gene and Joan and Jane all interacting. Sometimes our audience goes, wait, timeout. I'm not quite sure who's who here. You don't want to give your audience a reason to take a mental detour to do mathematics and try and figure things out. Out. We don't say this facetiously because honestly, our attendee really wasn't aware how close those were. And sometimes our stories are so close to us, we don't see what the audience sees. So I want to put a plug in here for what we always teach. You want to assess your presentation, you want to record yourself, watch yourself as if you were in the audience and see what the audience sees. Because that was one small but glaring aspect to her presentation that helped make a difference once she changed it. And don't, please don't miss what Darren said earlier. He just kind of ran by this. But you can create an amalgam. You can combine two characters into one. Maybe it was your uncle, your aunt, and your cousin who all told you the same advice. Make it your uncle Jim or my aunt Sonia or my cousin Reese. Yes, they all had a similar advice. But to give the audience Jims and Johnson and Rhys might be too much if you have other characters. So you amalgamate of one character the emotional truth Is there. It was a family member and you got the advice. We're not saying to be wanting and doing willy nilly but think about what best serves the audience and how you can frame it in a way where you're still telling the truth. But Darren, you mentioned there was a combination on amalgamation in one of your favorite movies as well for continuity. Was that Rudy?

Well, in the Odd Couple, Neil Simon I understand or my story that I heard that just made sense is that when Neil Simon wrote that there was actually three roommates and he took the characteristics of one of the roommates and divided it into the other two. So the Odd Couple, it created more conflict in the characters and which is intentional and part of stories. And even that became a television series. It's an odd Couple. Felix, was it? Felix Unger.

Felix.

And who is the other gentleman?

Oscar Madison.

That was his, that was his name. So anyway, the point is that he amalgamated. I learned a new word today. The word today is a Malcolm. So we, and we had this in our workshop a couple of weeks ago and on the stage workshop where we had exactly that. We combine the characters. There was a CEO and a vice president of development and it was too hard, too challenging for the audience to follow along just hearing it once and trying to keep the characters straight. And one of the also the world class techniques we teach is, is to actually personify each of the characters and give them a different stance, give them a slightly different voice. They look at a slightly different 45 degree angle. So the characters are talking to each other but we know clearly who's talking. So if we establish that Rhonda has her hand on her hip and has a little bit of an attitude. Every time we go to Rhonda we put our hand on her hip and then we talk with that attitude until the shift of the attitude or shift of emotion which will happen in a great story. And the purpose of the story for one of the characters emotion to shift. So we can't see the shift of emotion if we don't establish the emotion clearly.

One other concept too Darren, that we teach is in conversation. We use, we encourage the use of dialogue in your presentation. Don't make it a one person show and do all acting. But selectively key moments in a story are made more powerful when we hear the characters voices. And sometimes for clarity, I could say he said to her, no, if one person speaks and my uncle said Mark, your best choice here is to do nothing. But Dr. Frank, is that wise? Trust me Mark, I've been there myself. And it will not end well if you act today. So he says, listen to me, Mark. We know my uncle's talking, but Uncle Frank and I use his name in the conversation to remind the audience of who is speaking. That's very helpful when you have four or five characters in a presentation, which doesn't always happen, but having each character refer to the other by name clarifies who each character is.

No need to overcomplicate this, but we do want to emphasize to name your characters. Sub note. We often ask to give us an emotional and a visual. We don't want to describe them completely, but if they wore a big smile, if they had a warm heart, if they wore a red beret, what is that aspect that we could visualize the characters? Because when you're. Even though it's speaking, and we may have slides when we tell stories, it's a visual medium in the mind of the audience. So by giving the character name and one tiny detail of the physical appearance of the character, the audience is more likely to visualize that and go with you?

Yes. So you get a visual, we hear a name, and that gives us the feeling we are there in the scene with the character. Don't discount the power of a character name. If I mention Patty Party Pooper, you cannot figure out who she is. And I believe there was one sketch comedy series years ago with a character called Emily Lytella. Now I live in Lyzella, but I'm no lie teller. Okay, again, you see, you can play with it. You can have fun with that. Depending upon your contest context, I'm going to ask you all to examine your characters and as you name them, how can you use a name that helps the audience see them, hear them, understand them, and elevate your presentation to an experience? You do that and trust me, you will be unforgettable.

All right. Hey, short and sweet. It's an important concept to make sure we hold up and and look at your presentations. Go back and watch some of the recordings of your stories and ask yourself, where could I bring in the name? It's not going to take a long time, but yet it's going to be a big impact. If you want to join us at one of our workshops, please check out stagetimeworkshops.com. you could also check out Stagetime and be a platinum member. And then you come to all of our workshops. We have many members who do that, and it's just so much fun. Our friend Harriet, who is all in, and Linda Marie, who is all in, we have a lot of members who do that and what's really cool is seeing them grow and they listen to the podcast too. So I love that because people care about their skills and their audience and want to up level them. So I invite you to spend some more time with us. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Please pass it on to your friends who are presenters. We love what we do and we want to help you serve your audience so you can be unforgettable.

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