When Good Stories Exclude

By Matisse Hamel-Nelis, ADS, CPACC

How the stories we tell can quietly shut people out and what we can do about it

Inclusive storytelling is not a final step, it’s a mindset. Read along as Matisse Hamel-Nelis breaks down how communicators can audit their narratives, from language to visuals, to ensure their stories reflect the audiences they serve.

There is a moment most communicators know well. You finish a piece you are proud of. The writing is clean. The message is clear. The story lands. And then someone pulls you aside and says, quietly, “I didn’t see myself in that.”

That moment is worth sitting with. Because the gap between a well-crafted story and an inclusive one is not always obvious. It’s rarely the result of bad intentions. More often, it’s the result of unexamined habits, invisible defaults and assumptions about who is in the room.

Inclusive storytelling is not about adding diversity as a finishing touch. It’s about looking honestly at the choices baked into your narrative from the start.

The defaults we don’t notice

Every story starts with choices, like who the main character is, whose voice carries the weight of the narrative, whose experience is treated as the norm.

When those choices consistently favour the same kinds of people, a pattern forms. Not with malice. Just with habit.

Think about the last major communication campaign your organization produced. Whose experiences were centred? Whose were used as contrast or as a challenge to overcome? Who was the expert and who was the recipient of help?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are the starting point of a practical audit.

Studies on narrative transportation and character identification suggest that people tend to engage more deeply with stories when they can connect with the people in them. Conversely, when someone’s identity is used as a plot point rather than a full human perspective, it signals who the story is really for.

This shows up in language, too. Terms like “underserved communities,” “at-risk populations,” or “non-traditional backgrounds” are still common in professional communications, but they define groups by what they lack, or by how they differ from a presumed standard. That standard is worth questioning.

Framing shapes power

The way a story is framed does more than organize information. It distributes authority.

When a story about workplace inclusion features senior leaders talking about their commitment to diversity, but no employees sharing their actual experiences, the framing tells us something: the people with power get to define the problem and the solution. Everyone else becomes evidence.

This isn’t just a justice issue. It’s a credibility issue. Audiences are increasingly skilled at recognizing when a story is about them but not for them, and when voices are present but not really heard.

A more effective approach is to ask, at the drafting stage:

• Who has authority in this story and why?
• Is expertise defined narrowly or does the narrative make room for lived experience as a form of knowledge?
• Are the people most affected by the issue shaping the narrative or are they simply featured in it?

These questions are not meant to paralyze. They are meant to surface choices that are otherwise invisible.

Visuals are part of the story

In written communications, it’s easy to focus on words and overlook everything else. But visuals, layout and imagery carry meaning just as powerfully as the text alongside them.

Stock photography libraries have improved in recent years, but the defaults still skew toward specific body types, skin tones, ages and abilities. If your communications team pulls images quickly without a deliberate review, the cumulative effect across a year’s worth of materials can tell a story you never intended to tell.

The same applies to whose image accompanies a headline about leadership versus one about community outreach. Small choices, made consistently, add up.

A useful practice is to review your visual library as a whole, not just image by image. Look for patterns. Who appears in positions of authority? Who appears in supporting roles? Who is missing entirely?

Accessibility is part of this, too. Images without meaningful alt text, videos without captions and PDFs that are not screen-reader friendly (and no, Adobe Acrobat’s accessibility checker will not cut it) are not just technical gaps. They are signals about who the communication was designed for.

Who are you assuming is reading?

Every piece of writing makes assumptions about its reader. The challenge is that those assumptions often go unstated, which means they go unchallenged.

In professional communications, this shows up in references that assume shared cultural touchstones, in acronyms that assume organizational insiders, in metaphors drawn from specific sports or life experiences and in a tone that assumes the reader’s primary identity is their professional role.

None of these are inherently wrong. But when used without thought, they quietly narrow the audience.

Plain language principles are a useful anchor here. When writing is clear, direct and free of insider shorthand, it tends to be more accessible across a wider range of readers, including people reading in a second language, people with cognitive disabilities and people who are simply new to your organization or industry.

The discipline of plain language is often framed as a matter of clarity. It’s also, quietly, a matter of inclusion.

A practical audit for your next project

Before your next major communication goes out, try running it through these questions:

• Whose experience is centred in this story and whose is treated as secondary?
• Are the people most affected by this issue given a meaningful voice or are they used as context?
• Does the language define groups by what they lack or by who they are?
• Do the visuals reflect the range of people who make up your actual audience?
• Are there technical barriers, missing captions or inaccessible formats that may prevent some people from receiving the message at all?
• What assumptions are you making about who is reading and are those assumptions accurate?

These are not questions to answer perfectly. They are questions to ask honestly.

The deeper shift

Auditing a single piece of communication is a start. The more lasting change comes from building these questions into the process, not as a checklist at the end, but as a lens applied from the beginning.

That means inviting diverse perspectives into the room when stories are being shaped, not just when they are being reviewed. It means treating feedback about exclusion as useful information, not as criticism. And it means being willing to revise, even when a story already feels finished.

The stories organizations tell about themselves, their people and their work, shape who feels they belong. That is a significant amount of power to hold as a communicator.

The goal is not a perfect story. It’s a more honest one, told with awareness of who it might be quietly leaving out.