How to Become the Main Character in Your Own Story

In today's zeitgeist, a person with main character energy puts themselves first and takes control of their own narrative. We aspire to have “main character energy,” we compliment one another using this phrase, it’s on social media, it’s everywhere. 

I recently finished reading Worthy, by Jamie Kern Lima (who was a Denny’s waitress at 20, and by the age of 40 sold her cosmetics company IT Cosmetics in 2016 for $1.2B, pocketing an estimated $410M).

The book is all about self-worth, and that being the key to living a fulfilling life. I really enjoyed the book, and if you’re looking for your next personal growth read, I highly recommend it. 

At one point in the book, Jamie says:

“You are the main character of your own life and the script and character description is up to you.” 

As someone who is a movie nerd, this got me to thinking: What is a character description? What all goes into that? It also got me thinking, how does one start a script? What are the components of that?

Some quick internet research led me to the following insight: scripts are born in a multitude of ways, but three keys to getting scripts turned into movies are: a logline that hooks you, a story outline that brings the viewer on a journey, and great, multi-dimensional characters to bring that story to life. 

If you are new to this, like me, here’s a quick description of each — 

1. Character Descriptions - The craft of giving a character a personality, depth, and motivations that propel them through a story, including how they evolve over the course of a story. Characters should be unique and three-dimensional, with personalities and backstories that we can relate to. Their motivations inform their actions and decisions, which inform and create the narrative arc.

2. Loglines - A brief (one to two sentence) summary that hooks the reader in and describes the central conflict of the story.

3. Outlines - Stories typically follow a six-part structure: 1) exposition, 2) inciting incident, 3) rising action, 4) climax, 5) falling action and 6) redemption. Each event should be a single, short sentence. This is the shape of your story's main plotline or throughline.

I’m a nerd and so I decided to come up with an exercise to put this idea from Jamie’s book into action:

1. Write a character description based on me and who I’ve been up until today. 

2. Write a logline based on the script of my life up until today. 

3. Write an outline based on the script of my life up until today. 

Now here’s the fun part, remember what Jamie said in her book “You are the main character of your own life and the script and character description is up to you.” So I ALSO took the liberty of:

1. Writing a character description for who I am as my dream self in 2057 

2. Writing a logline based on the script of my life from this year to 2057 (when I am 2x the age I am now, or put differently, when I have lived another full lifetime based on my current age) 

3. Writing an outline for my dream life between now and 2057

And finally, for the best part, I went ahead and compared and contrasted the two exercises, using the key differences to identify areas where I have some work to do either on myself, or on my journey. I told you, I am a really big nerd. 

I found this exercise to be impactful in so many ways. Highlighting for me things that I’ve not let surface in terms of my dreams, desires, or even just who I want to show up as and how I want to move through the world. It illuminated so much for me, that I wanted to share it with you.

To help you, I went ahead and adapted some of the thought-provoking questions I used to come up with my loglines, outlines, and character descriptions in this resource.

It’s a bit meaty, so take what you want, leave behind what doesn’t serve you <3 

Should you decide to complete this exercise yourself, I can’t wait to hear what you think! 

Just for Fun

Here are the loglines for my top three favorite movies of all time, can you guess which they are?

1. While navigating their careers in Los Angeles, a pianist and an actress fall in love while attempting to reconcile their aspirations for the future.

2. Two women troubled with guy-problems swap homes in each other's countries, where they each meet a local guy and fall in love

3. A thief who steals corporate secrets through the use of dream-sharing technology is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a C.E.O., but his tragic past may doom the project and his team to disaster.

Scroll to see if you got them right :)

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Did you get them right?

1. La La Land

2. The Holiday

3. Inception