Story Telling

I have mentioned I go to at least one speaking course every year to improve my skills. About four years ago I went to a training in Denver and the one thing I learned from the 4-day training was how to create the stories, cut the fluff and organize the stories in a way I could use them for multiple messages such as inspirational, motivational, learning techniques or attention getting.

One of the criteria they had was to keep each story under five minutes and there had to be a laugh, attentionĀ  getting moment or emotional reaction every 30 to 60 seconds. It was extremely difficult at first and the more I worked on the technique the more natural it seemed.

First I made a list of all the incidents in my life that were noteworthy. I didn’t leave anything out. I started with about 20 but then expanded it to more than 75 before the weekend was out.

Next I wrote out the stories so I had all the details and then eliminated the extra words until I could tell the story in less than 5 minutes. The hard part was delivering a reactionary point each 30 – 60 seconds. But once I got the hang of it, it really works.

Then I printed out a copy of each of the stories and organized them into various categories so when I was presenting a speech I could immediately grab a story that would be suitable for each presentation.

This technique will help you organize great presentations with much less effort.

1 thought on “Story Telling”

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