Every story needs a hero.
And a villain.
Without good and bad battling against each other, the story gets just a tad bit boring.
In the movie The Matrix, the Architect said that the first version of the matrix was a utopia. It was perfect. A little too perfect. It was so perfect that the humans that were plugged into the matrix kept trying to wake up thinking their utopia was a dream.
When the story is too perfect, it becomes a snooze.
Humans needs conflict, drama and struggle just to pay attention to the story.
And that’s where the hero and villain come in.
Joe Frazier passed away on November 7, 2011. Although I wasn’t a Joe Frazier fan (actually, I dislike boxing altogether), I read alot of articles about him in the days following his death. Most writers said that Joe lived in Muhammad Ali‘s shadow.
But Globe & Mail writer, Jeff Blair, puts it another way. In an article entitled Frazier, Ali Linked to the End, Blair says that both Frazier and Ali played the hero and villain roles perfectly.
What made the story between these two boxers so exciting is that the hero and villain role transitioned between the men depending on who was telling the story. Blair writes:
“Ali was – is? – The Greatest. And Frazier was the guy who beat The Greatest – the first to do so.”
To fans who hated Ali, Frazier became their hero for beating The Greatest. For those who loved Ali, Frazier became the villain who defeated their idol.
Blair goes on to say that Tiger Woods, although a great athlete, is frustratingly boring because there’s no Frazier in Wood’s story, “no one for the anti-Tiger Woods forces to rally around.”
Every story needs a hero as well as a villain. In his book, Tell to Win, Peter Guber describes six types of heroes that can be used in the business narrative:
- You – The person telling the story. You’d describe your breakdown and how you turned that into your breakthrough.
- The listener – In other words, your audience.
- The customer – It can be the customer you’re engaging with or the testimonial or case study of another customer.
- The product – What you’re selling is hero because it solves your audience’s most pressing problem.
- The location – This could be urban vs rural, digital vs non-digital.
- Or, the tribe – This is your community and the ideology or cause that they’re rallying around.
The villain then becomes whatever you’re battling against. For example, when I share my story about why stories matter, I recount my days as a young girl when I was too shy to speak up for myself. I’m the hero whose voice is locked deep inside. The villains are those who picked on me.
The hero/villain dynamic need not be persons. They can be an ideology, a movement, an industry that won’t change, etc. How can you re-write your story to make it clear who’s the hero and who’s the villain?
