What makes you different makes you extraordinary
Any Stranger Things fans here?
Personally, I'm still reeling from the finale – so I'm kicking off 2026 with a few storytelling lessons from one of last year’s most beloved shows.
Because beyond the monsters and synth soundtracks, Stranger Things is a masterclass in story.
Here are three things it gets very right – and what we can steal from it.
1. Meet your audience where they are
Great speakers know this.
So do screenwriters.
Along with anyone who’s read Save the Cat.
Connection comes first.
What Stranger Things won at was a shared sense of nostalgia and familiarity that created instant connection and trust with its audience.
Really, think about it: Would the show have been as popular without bikes, basements and Dungeons & Dragons? Exactly.
So question for you:
Where can you create common ground early in your story – a shared laugh, memory, fear, or truth – before asking your audience to follow you somewhere deeper?
2. Timing matters – but now is still the best moment
Stranger Things benefitted from extraordinary timing.
It launched before the pandemic, then returned during moments when we were craving comfort, familiarity, and escape.
Now we can’t control timing – only readiness.
If a story matters to you, it likely matters to someone else too. Sit on it too long and it risks becoming irrelevant… or worse, told by someone else first.
So write the book you want to read.
Tell the story that won’t leave you alone.
And don’t wait for “perfect” timing – it doesn’t exist.
3. Be willing to be different
Stranger Things could have cast glossy, conventionally “perfect” characters.
It didn’t.
It chose awkward outsiders. Misfits. Kids who didn’t quite fit – and that’s exactly why we loved them.
The Duffer brothers didn’t invent this. Movies and TV have always known this. Think:
The Breakfast Club.
Punky Brewster.
Scooby-Doo. (Am I showing my age yet?)
And then there's The Big Bang Theory, and its hit spinoff Young Sheldon.
Normal was never cool.
So many of us are waiting for the perfect moment to tell our story.
Or waiting until we’re perfect.
And yet, what we often try the hardest to hide is usually the thing that makes us the most compelling.
So let your freak flag fly.
What makes you different is what makes you extraordinary – and deeply relatable.
Cat
Your Brand Catalyst, Story Strategist & Creative Ally.
PS: One of my goals for 2026 is to finish a draft of my next book by June. If writing a book is on your list this year, I’m launching a small accountability + support cohort to help make it real. Email me at hello@passionprojectpod.com if you want in. Writing and telling stories is way more fun when we do it together!