Persona Worksheets

Related ELA Standard: RL.9-10.3

Core Standard
Answer Keys Here

A persona is an imagined version a segment of an audience that you are attempting to serve and fulfill with your intended message. There is a great deal of research that needs to be performed in order to determine all of the data points that speak to the people that this may apply to. There is some preliminary data that synchs well with this type of data, and it starts with age, occupation, gender, and basis of experience. Financial data is not important when approaching these prospects from an academic standpoint, but commercial accounts are more focused on such data. These worksheets will help students learn how to better understand the intended audience of their message. They will also help in crafting a persuasive message to these personas.

Persona Worksheets To Print:

Introduction - What does this mean, and why do you think that Aristotle included this as o guideline for poets (writers)?

True or False - What do you know about this concept and what can you determine about the truth of these sentences?

Missing in Context - use the words that are provided to complete all of these thoughts.

Point of View - How do the two concepts relate?

Annabel Lee - Explore Edgar Allan Poe's use of this in the last poem that he had written.

Understanding the Narrator - It all stems from the voice and personality presented by a character who is narrating a story from the first-person point of view.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Explore the famous poem of T. S. Eliot's main character goes through something extreme.

Class Discussion - What is the relationship between the persona and the central problem of the story?

Steps to Understanding - These are all the questions that you want to ponder when you what to assure you speaking to your target audience.

In Video - You can use many different video clips along with this worksheet.

Class Evaluation - This can really help spark some good class discussions.

Contributions - What are they like? Are they the best person to tell this story? Why or why not? How does the choice of persona contribute to the overall effect of the story?

Creating a Persona - What does your narrator think about the story they are telling? How will these traits affect how your narrator tells the story?

Poem Breakdown - This is great to use with an example poem.

The Basics - This worksheet can be used to either introduce students to this topic or review it with them.

What Is a Persona In Literature?

We have all tried to make a particular impression on people in different situations, like meeting someone new on a blind date or presenting at work. Things like dressing up a little differently, working extra hard on your look for the day, and trying to speak unusually are some of the things you're likely to do in this regard. In other words, you were using your appearance, voice, and body language to represent a specific kind of personality or "persona."


Back in the day, the term "persona" was used to refer to the mask worn by stage actors, the idea being that the mask represented their character. In literary terms, you can use this word when talking about one or more characters in a piece of work such as a novel or play.


However, there's another meaning of persona from a literary standpoint. These days, the word is often used to depict the "voice" of a particular type of character – one who also happens to be the narrator within a literary work created in first-person.


Incidentally, a persona is also used in psychology. Mental health professionals (psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, etc.) use the term when talking about the personality someone presents to the outer world or the role they play in the public domain.


Simply put, persona ("personae" for plural) is your personality!


Types of Persona


As discussed earlier, this concept has different meanings or connotations. The following are the most common ones.


Voice


Whenever a writer creates something in first-person, they have to adopt a specific voice. You can think of it as a verbal personality of the narrator. However, this only applies when the narrator is one of the characters. You don't have to know their name or role within a literary setting as a reader, but they must be separate and distinct characters.


Furthermore, the narrator's personality and identity have to be different from the actual author's. So, a persona isn't the voice of an author. Rather, they're the narrator's voice that they created within their literary work.


Character


Theater plays usually have a "dramatis personae" in the beginning. This is a list of all the characters. Novels may also include a "dramatis personae," though it's not normally provided as a list. Many novels include an illustration of the characters, like a family tree or corporate hierarchy.


All literary works (novels, poems, plays, etc.) contain one character. In that regard, every literary creation has "personae."


Terms Related to Persona


Tone


This refers to the narrator's attitude towards a particular subject within a literary piece of work. You can also think of it as the author's attitude. However, it doesn't have to be identified with the writer.


Point of View


Any piece of writing can have one of the following three points of view.


- First Person (I)
- Second Person (You)
- Third Person (He or She)


Whatever the point of view of a literary work, the narrator has a unique persona. However, the narrator is usually the author in third-person writings. Therefore, this concept is only relevant where first-person narratives are concerned. That being said, there might be some special cases of a third-person narrator with a different persona from the original author.