Choosing a talent or skill that fits with your character’s personality, lifestyle, and values can go a long way to helping them break free of the common stereotypes seen so often in fiction. This thesaurus will help you find the perfect quality or two that will show readers your character’s uniqueness while also acting as an asset when it comes to goal achievement.

When choosing a talent or skill, think about the personality of your character, his range of experiences and who his role models might have been. Some talents might be genetically imparted while others are created through exposure (such as a character talented at fixing watches from growing up in his father’s watch shop) or grow out of interest (archery, wakeboarding, or magic). Don’t be afraid to be creative and make sure the skill or talent is something that works with the scope of the story. 

Description: a person who uses enthusiasm, product knowledge, and compelling reasoning to sway an audience to invest in a product, brand or service. A promoter drums up business and sales, raising awareness and facilitating discoverability. To do this, they effectively utilize different…

Beneficial Strengths or Abilities: A good promoter has strong hygiene, dresses appropriately for interacting with one’s audience, is well spoken and has strong product knowledge. Knowing how to read people and their moods well and be able to juggle multiple action items at one time are both important. Having a strong sense of presence, good manners and posture, a pleasing sense of humor and…

Character Traits Suited for this Skill or Talent: Extroverted, Passionate, Genuine, Outgoing, Enthusiastic, Focused, Hard Working, Shrewd, Intelligent…

Required Resources and Training: Public speaking, working as a team, researching the market and competing products, understanding how ads work and psychology behind decision-making, looking at things from the audience’s view to what they need and want so…

Associated Stereotypes and Perceptions:

  • that promoters are pushy and refuse to take no for an answer*
  • they talk more than they listen*
  • they are motivated by “what’s in it for me” instead of “what’s best for the audience/customer”…

Scenarios Where this Skill Might be Useful:

  • a career in sales
  • job interviews
  • working on a political campaign…

Angela Ackerman

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

5 Comments.

  • Cynsational Information | TiaMart Blog
    September 13, 2014 6:52 am

    […] Hidden Emotions: How to Tell Readers What Characters Don’t Want to Show by Angela Ackerman from Writers Serving to Writers. Peek: “Worry of emotional ache, a scarcity of belief in others, intuition, or defending one’s popularity are all causes she or he may repress what’s happening inside them.” See additionally Angela on Taking Your Character Further and Deeper with…Anger? and Character Skills & Talents: Promotion. […]

  • Monday Must-Reads [07.21.14 The Last Month's Worth]
    July 21, 2014 5:44 pm

    […] Character Skills and Talents: Promotion | WRITERS HELPING WRITERSWRITERS HELPING WRITERS […]

  • Oh, this would be THE skill to have! The folks who do this, and who genuinely love the product or event they’re promoting, are sooo effective.

  • This would be useful in the right setting.

  • LOL…you’ve basically described my brother (for the most part lol) 🙂 Thanks for this 😀

Comments are closed.