The key to a compelling story is that it should be entertaining. It should have people on the edge of their seats with excitement, or sitting back shaking with laughter, or perhaps sad or thoughtful. A successful story grabs the imagination and the emotions.
It does not have to be, as a spoken speech, word perfect. [...]
Archive for August, 2008
Word Perfect?
Posted in For Toastmasters, tagged audience, emotion, phrase, story, story teller, word perfect on August 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Choose your Words
Posted in Brighten the story, Uncategorized, tagged dictionary, meaning, select, story, thesaurus, words on August 26, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Each day I walk past a new housing development and each day there is something new to see. Today I watched a master mason laying stones to form an elegant entrance to the project. The work he had already done spoke of an eye for detail and an instinct for which piece of stone would [...]
For Toastmasters: Saving your Speech with Story
Posted in For Toastmasters, tagged anecdote, memory, points, speech, story on August 23, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Let’s suppose you are a fairly new Toastmaster and you have this speech coming up. You know you aren’t supposed to use notes, but how can you possibly remember 5 – 7 minutes worth of material?
It works like this: First you plan your speech as you have been shown – a beginning, an ending and [...]
Stories for branding #1. The “aww” factor
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged branding, problem, solve, story, value system on August 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Your brand is the story of who you are. Well, let’s say it’s the image of you that you carefully create thruogh story.
Look at an example – Smuckers. They make jam. They have large factories, men in white coats doing quality control, huge vats of jam and preserves, trucks coming and going – everything that [...]
Timing
Posted in For Toastmasters, Uncategorized, tagged Dialogue, emotion, humour, paues, spoken, story, timing on August 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I had this story that I thought was just perfect for my next speech project. The only problem was, when I timed it, it was too long. I cut words and phrases out. Still too long. I cut almost a whole paragraph out. When I timed the speech it was just under the 7.30.
7.28 to [...]
The dreaded ‘Studies have shown…’
Posted in Brighten the story, tagged anecdote, example, issues, statistic, story, studies on August 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Want to see the eyes of your audience glaze over? Try saying “Studies have shown…”
Leaving aside issues of who paid for the survey, size of sample and other inconvenient details, studies are just plain boring. Serious researchers have other means of finding them; your audience or reader just doesn’t care – it isn’t the time [...]
