Storytelling Techniques for Public Speaking
Great Public Speakers are usually great storytellers
However great storytellers are not always great Public Speakers.
Storytellers will take you on a journey: great speakers should take you to a destination.
The story is never for its own sake but always delivered with a purpose.
In business presentations, a story can be used to reinforce and embed a message.
You could also support that message with a picture on a slide, a chart, or a statistic, but the aim remains to get across a message and using a supporting story is the best way of making that message ‘sticky’.
When Kamala Harris accused Joe Biden of supporting segregationists, she told the story of
‘a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day,’ she said. ‘And that little girl was me.’
That is barely a story – it is more of a pen picture - it is hardly a sentence long, but contained within it are all the key elements of an effective speaking story:
- it is personal
- it is visual
- it asserts the speaker’s credibility
- it anchors us back onto the message.
Michelangelo declared that when he worked on a statue:
‘The sculpture is already complete within the marble block before I start my work.
It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.’
And so when he was asked about how he carved the famous statue of David, he said:
‘It's simple. I just removed everything that is not David.’
A speaker might take a similar approach to a story. They choose a story suitable for their message and, like a piece of marble, hack away every detail that is not necessary to support that message.
This is why we say in storytelling:
‘A story is a picture: not a photograph.’
A photograph will show everything that is there, whether relevant or not.
A painter will choose the elements that are important for his vision and will exclusively highlight those, leaving out everything that is not necessary.
When we hone our stories, we highlight the elements that are essential to our message and leave out the points that don’t support or might even actively undermine of message.
Therefore if I want to paint the picture of a man who is corrupt and untrustworthy, I might choose just to tell you that he was seen all last week speaking in a room in the company of three well-known gangsters.
I might fail to tell you that that room was a courtroom and the man was a witness in a court case.
That is an exaggerated example, but on a more mundane level, if you wanted to stress the importance of punctuality and arriving at meetings, you might tell us how you always arrive 45 minutes early to your weekly meeting. You might leave out the fact that that is largely taken out of your hands as there was only one train that would get you to the destination at all!
It is important to find the right story and it is then important to highlight only those elements of the story that will resonate with your audience and lead the listener clearly onto your message.
10 tips of techniques to make a story more compelling
-
The moment
Once you know the point of your story you will be able to find the moment in your story that is key to moving your audience to the desired conclusion.
If I want to let my audience know that it is possible to over-prepare for a presentation or performance, I can tell them of my experience in Germany when as a cellist my performance fell apart.
It was not because I did not prepare. I was over-prepared and wrongly prepared.
I had learnt and practised the piece thoroughly. I knew it inside out and had no reason (so I thought) to be nervous at all.
I sat down supremely confident and relaxed. I thought I had ‘arrived’, because I was so well prepared I felt I no longer even needed to be nervous. The pianist started the introduction and suddenly I was overcome with a wave of anxiety; I started shaking and could barely hold my bow on the strings. It was a disaster.
My precise purpose in telling that story would guide me toward what part I wanted to emphasise.
If my message revolved around the danger of overconfidence, I would emphasise that moment when I sat down fearless, how ‘pleased with myself’ I was and then how the nerves suddenly overcame me.
In that case, the moment was when I sat down to start playing.
If my message was about practising the wrong way, I would emphasise how each day I would sit down and play through the piece almost automatically without paying sufficient attention to what I was doing.
In that case, the moment was when I sat down to play through on a Tuesday evening, while my mind was distracted by what I would be doing later.
If my message was about the importance of nerves as part of a great performance, I would emphasise how foolish I was to believe that nerves were not part of the process.
In that case,e the moment was sometime before the performance when I said to myself that I did not need nerves. And how I discovered that I did!
-
The point of view
What do I want my audience to experience?
What angle do I want to highlight?
If I want the focus to be on me and what I learnt or what I did not realise until it was too late, then I would be telling the story from my point of view:
‘I sat down. I felt supremely confident.’
If I wanted the audience to experience the feelings for themselves:
‘Imagine this. You sit down. You are feeling supremely confident.’
Maybe I just want to offer a bit of objectivity on the situation:
‘I knew a man. He sat down. He was feeling supremely confident.’
You do not always have to tell your stories as ‘I’; consider whether they might be more effective if you change the perspective.
-
Dialogue
Dialogue is a brilliant way to bring a story to life.
Rather than narrating an event in the past in reported speech, bring it alive and tell it in the moment:
‘So I said….’
‘You must be joking,’ he said.
‘No. No. I am deadly serious.’
Immediately the scene comes to life and you are more likely to add energy and feeling to the words if you are repeating a conversation, as opposed to reporting what was said sometime in the past.
‘No. No. I am deadly serious!’
is much more likely to attract emphasis to the keywords than the reported:
I said, No. No. I am deadly serious.
-
Mark characters with a tone of voice
We can take the dialogue one stage further by differentiating the different speakers by tone of voice.
Rather than having to say: ‘I said; he said’ each time, we can make a clear distinction between voices through the modulation of our own tone of voice.
I remember hearing a speaker talking about how sometimes we need someone to push us out of our comfort zone and described a conversation between him and his boss.
He did not need to say: ‘I said; he said’ each time, he simply pitched his voice higher for himself (as he was being a bit nervous and unsure) and gave his boss’s voice great depth, resonance, and a slower pace (to emphasise the authority and control):
‘I don’t think I can do this.’ (fast high voice)
‘I am sure you can. It is a great opportunity for you.’ (slower resonant voice)
‘But I don’t think I am ready.’
‘No one thinks they are ready.’
‘What if I mess up?’
‘You won’t and I will be there to support you.’
Just by imagining the different voices, it
- renders ‘I said; he said’ unnecessary,
- forces you to greater variety for each speaker’s voice,
- brings the situation to life
- and keeps the presentation flowing forward.
-
Paint a picture
I remember when I was involved in Speakers Clubs, there was an assignment called
‘Vocabulary and Word Pictures’
to encourage greater linguistic expression.
Very often the speaker would go overboard on setting the scene, like a novelist.
In fact, what want are more brief portraits and less detailed landscapes.
AS long as we remember that the story is purely a vehicle for getting the message across
So…
‘There I was 10 minutes late for my big moment, half a mile from the venue with a big wet patch on the front of my trousers’
…will probably be enough to paint a picture of embarrassment, stress and helplessness.
-
Appeal to more senses
On occasions you may want to make that image so vivid that it becomes the abiding image of the presentation, in which case rather than just helping us see your situation, you may want to help us feel, hear, and even smell.
Therefore, you may want to add greater depth to your picture:
‘There I was 10 minutes late for my big moment, I abandoned my taxi to the sound of honking horns and angry drivers bellowing obscenities at each other. I started to run, it was raining, I was getting sweaty and as I dodged a large pram I ran straight into a lady clutching her morning coffee. The next thing I knew, I had a scalding sensation down the front of my trousers and I could feel hot coffee running down my legs.’
Do you need that much detail?
That will depend on how important this part of the story is to your presentation.
‘Less’ tends to be ‘more’ in presentations.
-
Ear catching phrases
The best use of traditional rhetorical phrasing is in the advertising industry.
They know that catchy phrases will stay with the listener:
‘Always big on quality ad always Lidl on price.’
Therefore you could find yourself rushing to your meeting
‘in a cold sweat, covered in hot coffee’.
-
Rhythm and Repetition
You can take the lead from children’s stories and nursery rhymes.
Public Speaking needs to be clear and simple and so repetition like the chorus of a song can set a framework for your story.
‘It was ten minutes to the start of my presentation and I was still two miles away.’
‘It was now five minutes…’
‘It was now the time when I should have been walking out on stage…’
‘It was now ten minutes past…’
-
Dramatic contrast
‘Always big on quality and always Lidl on price.’ – already carries a contrast between ‘big’ and ‘Lidl’:
similarly, ‘cold sweat and hot coffee’.
Contrasts resonate.
You could make your panic more telling by comparing your state of mind, as a hard-working, successful business executive to the apparent nonchalance of the tramp you ran past leaning against the wall.
-
And what is your Point?
Always test your story against the key message of your presentation.
Is the story leading the audience to the right conclusion?
Are there any ambiguities in the story?
Are you telling something because you think it might be funny, but has no direct relevance to the message?
There are many simple techniques we can use, but the simplest guide is to have a clear purpose to the presentation and so like Michelangelo, cut away at your story until only the essentials remain.
