The SWOT Analysis in Storytelling
Using the SWOT analysis for character development and story setting.
SWOT analysis is the strategic analysis employed by business firms to study and understand different aspects of themselves and their competitive environment.
This is an acronym that stands for:
S — strengths
W — weaknesses
O — opportunities
T — threats.
The strengths and weaknesses analysis is internal to the firm in gaining a general understanding of their aptitude and powerlessness. The opportunities and threats are external factors that might influence the firm’s success or failure depending on the level of attention and management given to the situation.
It’s interesting how creating a business is analogous to telling a story. Entrepreneurs have been one of the greatest storytellers in history, but the title attribution is widely unacknowledged and undetected. We often see authors, novelists, scriptwriters, and the likes as storytellers without taking notice that every business we know today and patronize has a unique set of stories embedded inside them and with us being part of the story.
Entrepreneurs and storytellers share similar characteristics in thinking, building, communicating, and dealing with the devils in detail, albeit, they might serve different audiences. Usually, an entrepreneur’s story involves ensemble characters seen as the stakeholders (customers, investors, employees, communities, and their teams) brought together by the product or service being offered. This shows one of the similarities because storytellers create akin characters (maybe fictional or not) that dynamically interact in the storyline.
Entrepreneurs also create their own world just like storytellers do. Indeed, a storyteller can choose to go the extra imagination to make a world out of a galaxy but it is no different from an entrepreneur who intends to establish a research laboratory that studies the galaxy and create a data brokerage business around it.
We can see it in the light that entrepreneurs think about the world (the market), the characters (you, themselves, and others involved), then, the storyline which is the product or service that tends to solve the problem of the character and the world.
“The entrepreneur’s product or service is the plot of the story, the industry can be seen as the world, and the stakeholders are the characters”
Entrepreneurs follow processes just like storytellers would love to tell their stories in ACTs and beats. The entrepreneur’s process is the business cycle.
THE SWOT ANALYSIS IN STORYTELLING
As earlier said, the SWOT analysis means the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Business firms assess themselves and their environment to stay ahead of the competition and launch themselves towards success. Let’s follow this order to lay down how it is applicable to character and story setting development.
Get your seatbelt on!
Internal factors: Strengths — Weaknesses (S&W)
Strengths (internal):
To create a perfect story you need to create tons of conflicts and crises, spins and turns, emotions and feelings that are present in the world and characters strive for the best while anticipating the worst. Just like in our old same world cluttered with undulating challenges and expectations, we keep striving for a balance and pace with dreams.
The strengths of the character are special abilities or characteristics possessed by the character that ensure adaptability and survivorship. Strengths bring solutions and help in managing crises when they hit the characters so hard. We can see this throughout other stories, for example, Sheriff Woody in the TOY STORY has a leadership skill as one of his strengths, he gathers the team, motivates them, joins them in the quest and also makes sacrifices especially when it hurts.
The strength can come as a result of learned experience, education, or inheritance. It is peculiar to a given character and determines their success. It can be a special fighting skill or Spider-man throwing webs. Can be the skill to communicate and convince like that seen in the Jordan Belfort character in the WOLF OF WALL STREET. In the Hergé comics, ADVENTURE OF TINTIN, the Tintin character has a sharp intellect to think quickly, investigate quickly, and act quickly. We can all argue that Batman has no super-strength but his money and ability to strategize and act as a leader fill up the space. CRUELLA has some sort of mixed strengths, one which she inherited from her real mother, the baroness as being aesthetically creative and authoritative, she learned patience and endurance from the mother that raised her, and she learned shrewdness from her pickpocket friends.
Strengths are built both by external and internal forces (we will come to that later in this article), but strengths are always internal and have nothing to do with external influences — you can’t call ‘luck’ a strength unless your character is Domino in DEADPOOL that has the ability to manipulate luck, and this is as a result of her superpower strength. Luck is external factor and not a strength per se, better still, you can choose to make your characters beautiful, rich or kind to attract luck.
Weaknesses (internal):
In business, the teams assess themselves to identify their flaws and disadvantages. This assessment provides advanced knowledge to the team and can help to identify the type of opportunity they can leverage and also identify empty areas they need to work on. Disadvantages can be minimal capital, little professional network, or insufficient skill and knowledge in the field. In any case, the weakness leaves room for growth and spurs the motivation towards self-development.
This is applicable to building a character. Characters should not be perfect, there must be some sort of flaws or shortcomings that impede them if not blind them from seeing the big picture. Flawed characters are loved characters, they don’t always know it all, if not the story is not compelling. Tintin has a self-doubt weakness even though he is smart. Harry Potter is an orphan, he has an anger issue and is impulsive. Raya, in the RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON needs to overcome her weakness which is a trust issue, and with that being overcome, she was able to save her dad and the five tribes. Your character shouldn’t always figure out the solution, create some space for their growth.
A strength can turn into weakness when it comes to the light of being proud or selfish. If a character has a special strength but only thinks of herself as the most important and self-glorifies herself above others, then that is a weakness. Conversely, a weakness can also turn into a strength when it has an advantage to transforming the character and world positively.
Being antagonistic does not usually imply weakness, characters can contend to moral codes and socially accepted rules which cannot be seen as a weakness. This depends on the story’s perspective, it can be that the character wants to be excluded from the crowd like Moana going beyond the reef or Judy Hopps in ZOOTOPIA being the first tame animal to be a police officer in a space filled with voracious ones. JOKER is antagonistic in the way that his mental state and the corrupt Gotham posit him, so he only sees from his own lens. Character’s antagonism is usually determined by inherent and environmental forces, like Jake in AVATAR, who suddenly backs the Na’vi when he learns that humans are trying to destroy the alien’s home. Jake is naturally kind from the start and he also found himself in love with Neytiri (the alien girl).
DEVELOPING THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES (INTERNAL)
Although strengths and weaknesses may be unique and internal to a character, external forces also influence the build-up of these internal factors. When you want to build a character’s strengths and weaknesses, think about their persona development and their ambient environment.
Persona, simply put, is a character in a fictional play or a facade that one portrays to the world. The persona of the character will display the strengths and weaknesses throughout the story, and because you want a character that will resonate with humans, there should always be an attribute that is relatable to the human experience.
When you want to build a character’s persona, think about how the traits (shown below) can be a weakness or strength to the character.
PERSONA DEVELOPMENT
- Age:
A character’s age can determine the level of their experience and perception. Age can influence a character’s strength or weakness because it can identify how the character would likely think or react to a situation.
For example, young characters are prone to taking unnecessary risks and could end up making a lot of mistakes down the line, which is a weakness. On the other hand, old characters can manage risks and perceive imminent danger because of the number of experiences they have garnered over their lifespan — strength.
- Location:
“Where you are can affect how you respond — the question now is where is it?” Geography can also influence their strength and weakness. Characters may think based on the environment they have been exposed to. If a character has been in a miserable prison for a long time, it might give an edge in endurance but can leave a traumatic scar of weakness.
- Education/skill/talent:
The skill, talent, educational background, and academic exposure of a character can be a weakness or a strength. If the knowledge or skill is limited then the character might also be limited. Excess knowledge can also lead to complacency and pride in some characters but useful skills can be resourceful to the character’s growth arc and world.
- Family background:
Character’s flaws and strengths can be greatly influenced by the family background. Think of it in the area of socioeconomic value, upbringing value, and hereditary disposition. A character’s home training has a lot to do when shaping the character’s action, thinking, and perspective; you might not entirely need to tell about your character’s upbringing in your story, but from their words, actions, thoughts, and likes, the upbringing trait will be obvious. A character from a well-mannered home might have the advantage of being disciplined and respected but a character from a family with a genetic defect may find it hard to fit in with the wild-type population.
- Goals:
Goals ramp up stories and set up some suspenseful tone to the plot. They can reveal a character’s strengths or weaknesses and can lead them to either success or failure. If a character’s goal is not necessary to the growth arc or incapable of transforming the world then the goal might yield unsatisfying results — this is a weakness. But if the character’s goal is a strong-willed pursuit that will bring change to the world positively — then this shows strength.
- Values:
Characters share an interest with what or who they place value on. They devote time, resources, and passion to what they think is valuable or desirable. This value can expose their weaknesses or strengths. A character may value a friend that doesn’t correspond to the same value, this can make the character flawed.
- Fears:
The fear of missing out (FOMO), fear of failure, fear of working in a team, fear of continuous wrong social-belief cycle can all reveal strengths and weaknesses. For example, a character can be afraid of blood and choose to drop out of medical school. The fear of joining a corrupt government can make a character speak up to protest and revolutionize. Fears have their own strengths and flaws.
- Appearance:
A character’s look can also be a weakness and strength to the character. Let’s say that a character was once a victim of a fire accident and still got the scar, this character might show weakness by choosing to live in solitude but in the other way round, the victim can decide to come out from the shell and motivate others feeling down — and there you got a strength!
- Superpower and physical strengths:
Superpowers and physical strengths depend on the genre of the story. If your character is a superpower hero or it’s an action-thriller genre — then superpower or physical strength may be required. A character more powerful than the opposing force shows strength, but a character who can’t control his super strength shows weakness.
- Socioeconomic status:
dentify if the character has a low socioeconomic value or is the character from the middle-class or high-class? Also how influential is the character? How reputable are they? This can be an advantage or disadvantage to characters and can reveal their flaws and strengths. Some characters might be belittled by society and not given ear, while others possess much influence.
- Experience & Past stories:
Just like the great philosopher Sir. John Locke said in his famous quote; “No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience”. Man reflects based on experiences and these shape the way a character reacts to the environment. Some characters may have experienced failures, turnbacks, and traumatic events that affect their present moment, such experience can enhance character’s survivorship and perception or can lead to despondency and fears.
- Idiosyncrasies:
These are peculiar habits or odd characteristics that should be unique to the character. Sometimes, they are depicted in a subtle way, for example might be a character that grits teeth when the situation becomes tough, this quirk can show resistance and courageousness in character. Or a character that hugs a pillow tight when asleep, this can likely show dependency, fear, or being ungenerous. They can be subtle but present.
- Psycho-personalities:
This is attached to the level of consciousness in the character, what unconscious behavior do they display that could reduce or intensify anxiety and crisis? What are the psychological temperaments? Maybe a character can be too reactive to gratify urgent wants without prior thinking, it can lead to damages but another character can be proactive and calculative before actions. A character can have self-doubt or high self-efficacy traits, a character can be neurotic, calm, strict, kind, aggressive, compulsive, submissive, or employs detachment in dealing with people or situations.
I’d advise you to know the temperament of your characters and use the feeling wheel or emotion wheel to know how emotions will play out throughout the story.
Also, use the Big Five Personality Factors to determine your character’s psycho-personality score band:
O — openness
C — conscientiousness
E — extroversion
A — agreeableness
N — neuroticism
The persona development factors listed above show you the attributes of a character that the audience can resonate with. Audiences root for characters going through conflicts and they want to see their strengths and weaknesses come through in fueling or mitigating the conflict.
You need to determine which factor can be a strength or weakness to your character. A character cannot be too perfect or too weak, but they can be a blend of both. A character’s education might be a strength while socioeconomic status might be a weakness. Age can be the weakness, while fears can be the strength. It’s yours to choose.
Here’s an example:
Let’s take an example of a character, call her Melissa, a psychology student who finds out that her professor who published a commercially and critically successful theory about the support of feminism, mistreated his ex-wife. The picture below shows an example of Melissa’s strengths and weaknesses using the persona attributes.
Note that: you need to choose the persona attributes that most matter to your story and genre.
External factors: Opportunities — Threats (O&T)
Just like the strengths and weaknesses are internal to a business firm, the opportunities and threats are external factors that are present in the environment, these factors cannot be controlled by the firm but can be managed effectively.
In today’s world, the likelihood of market changes and disruptive innovations has increased exponentially since past centuries as businesses and startups spring up. Today’s successful businesses are marked by their ability to adapt to changes.
Environmental changes can be tricky, what might promote a firm can shut down another. Threats and opportunities depend on how they are viewed or interpreted. For example, competitors can be a threat to cause market disruption and can also be an opportunity to augment market value or create a shared economy.
In your story, you can also think of how the opportunity and threat factors can affect the story setting, world, character’s arc, and journey.
Opportunities (external):
The opportunities are potential positive advantages present in the story, these opportunities can be predicted or can occur suddenly to promote characters. Opportunities are external positive factors so characters cannot control them but they can be managed, depending on how receptive the character’s strengths or weaknesses are to the opportunity. A character’s weakness can contend with an opportunity and they can lose such opportunity, while their strength can leverage on opportunities.
Let’s see an example from the 2019 Oscar-winning movie, PARASITE when Ki-woo (the son) was given an opportunity by his friend, Min-hyuk to act as a university student to take over his job as an English tutor to Da-Hye (a girl from a wealthy family). One of Ki-woo’s strengths in the black-comedy movie is that he’s a “poseur” so he accepted the opportunity and played the role perfectly.
Threats (external):
Threats are indications of potential challenge or danger. A lot of things can pose a threat, it might be from competitors or friends with ulterior motives or a society with social codes that don’t support growth and happy well-being. Threats are often not predictable to establish suspense, they are the main drivers of change and twist.
In the parasite example, Ki-woo’s family (called the Kim family) devised a perfect plan to take over all the roles in Da-Hye’s wealthy home. They succeeded and everything went smoothly until the former housekeeper, Moon-gwang, came back to the mansion. That was one of the threats and a major turning point for the movie.
DEVELOPING THE OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS (EXTERNAL)
Business firms develop strategies called “environmental scanning” to study and understand the macro-environment in which the business operates. We can also apply this environmental scanning to a story set by viewing the world holistically.
The acronym PESTETH summarizes the factors involved in environmental scanning. These factors can promote opportunities or threats, depending on how they are presented or viewed.
- Political factors
- Economic factors
- Sociocultural factors
- Technological factors
- Environmental factors
- Time factors
- Human factors
PESTETH:
- Political factors: political factors should not be sidelined only to the federal or state government, but this can also include organizational structures like schools, companies, villages, etc. So think about the type of government? Does the government serve as a threat or opportunity to your characters and world? What kind of law or order is passed? Do taxes affect the world or labor laws? How is the legal system?
- Economic factors: is there scarcity in the world? What kind of economic system is present, is it a socialist system, or does the world support a free capitalist market? If it matters, then include the employment level, exchange rate, etc.
- Sociocultural factors: what are the cultural practices? How does society react and live together with themselves and other societies? Think about the population, demographics, lifestyle, social codes, and belief system.
- Technological factors: think about the technology and innovation trends in the world. Are machines powered by magic or biological organisms? Are the technologies old, new, or emergent? Are they threats or opportunities to the characters and world?
- Environmental factors: you can choose your environment from top-down and also consider some environmental forces that might affect the world. Just like climate change poses a threat in our current world and clean energy from biological sources promises sustainable living. Consider some environmental layers like biome, geographical landscape, municipality, etc.
Examples:
#Exosphere (outer space: galaxies, planets, black holes, asteroids, etc.)
#Biosphere (biome: forest, desert, grassland, etc.)
#Hydrosphere (water: ocean, sea, river, lake, etc.)
#Lithosphere (land: rocks, volcanoes, earthquakes, etc.)
#Atmosphere (air: weather, sky, clouds, etc.)
#Cryosphere (frozen: ice caps, glaciers, snow, etc.)
#Urban (developed city or spaceship)
#Rural (countryside)
#Single (house, building, vehicle)
- Time factors: what is the time period? How does time affect the world and the characters? Is there a time trend that poses threat or promotes opportunity? Think about seasonality, longevity, chronology or any time-based factor that matters to your story and genre.
- Human factors: humans are part of the factors that might bring threat or opportunity to the world and characters. So think about villains, friends, mentors, competitors, enemies, etc.
These factors determine the setting of the story and it is important to note that some factors are very important to some genres and not necessary to others. The factors act as either threats or opportunities to characters and the world.
Here’s an example:
Let’s set up a sci-fi story in space. Let’s say that in 2095, a group of space tourists got stuck in space and they found out that a new radiation agent coming from a star can cause death and become infectious like a virus.
As every business uses the SWOT analysis to examine and study their internal strengths and weaknesses, external opportunities and threats — a similar application of this format can be used in developing characters and constituting setting in storytelling. This article doesn’t give you a story structure or explains more about genres, but it sheds light on the characters and setting to get your next story polished.
Good luck as you try it out!
I’m Terry Isife, I blend perfectly as a scriptwriter, entrepreneur, UI/UX designer, and scientist. I love writing and developing technologies, businesses, movies, designs, and scientific projects.
The goal of writing this article is to incorporate my knowledge in business into storytelling. This article will continually grow and expand. Please do reach out to me if you have corrections, ideas, and suggestions. I’m always open to any feedback.
