{"id":451,"date":"2011-11-15T09:36:42","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T14:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/?p=451"},"modified":"2011-11-15T09:35:16","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T14:35:16","slug":"6-ways-to-identify-a-hero-in-your-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/6-ways-to-identify-a-hero-in-your-story\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Ways to Identify a Hero in Your Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every story needs a hero.<\/p>\n

And a villain.<\/p>\n

Without good and bad battling against each other, the story gets just a tad bit boring.<\/p>\n

In the movie The Matrix<\/a><\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

When the story is too perfect, it becomes a snooze.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Humans needs conflict, drama and struggle just to pay attention to the story.<\/p>\n

And that’s where the hero and villain come in.<\/p>\n

Joe Frazier<\/a> 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<\/a>‘s shadow.<\/p>\n

But Globe & Mail writer, Jeff Blair, puts it another way. In an article entitled Frazier, Ali Linked to the End<\/a><\/em>, Blair says that both Frazier and Ali played the hero and villain roles perfectly.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

“Ali was \u2013 is? \u2013 The Greatest. And Frazier was the guy who beat The Greatest \u2013 the first to do so.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To fans who hated Ali, Frazier became their hero for beating The Greatest<\/em>. For those who loved Ali, Frazier became the villain who defeated their idol.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

Every story needs a hero as well as a villain. In his book, Tell to Win<\/a><\/em>, Peter Guber describes six types of heroes that can be used in the business narrative:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You<\/strong> – The person telling the story. You’d describe your breakdown and how you turned that into your breakthrough.<\/li>\n
  2. The listener<\/strong> – In other words, your audience.<\/li>\n
  3. The customer<\/strong> – It can be the customer you’re engaging with or the testimonial or case study of another customer.<\/li>\n
  4. The product<\/strong> – What you’re selling is hero because it solves your audience’s most pressing problem.<\/li>\n
  5. The location<\/strong> – This could be urban vs rural, digital vs non-digital.<\/li>\n
  6. Or, the tribe<\/strong> – This is your community and the ideology or cause that they’re rallying around.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    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?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[149,152,145,146,151,142,143,148,147,150],"class_list":["post-451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-narrative","tag-hero","tag-jeff-blair","tag-joe-frazier","tag-mohammed-ali","tag-muhammad-ali","tag-peter-guber","tag-tell-to-win","tag-the-architect","tag-the-matrix","tag-villain","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":457,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions\/457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leesabarnes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}