In my last two blogs, I shared the importance of storytelling and specific ideas on where to find your stories. So now that you have the idea, and your story is written, how do you bring it to life? How to you actually tell it so people will want to listen.
Here are a few ideas:
One trick is to engage all your senses – or at least some of them. That means, tell your listener what you see, what you hear, what you smell, what you taste and what you feel. This last one can be what you feel inside, like an emotion, or what you feel physically, like a hard bench. By engaging the senses, you invite your listener into your world and make them actually feel your words.
Another technique is to use dialogue. Here’s an example – see if you can tell the difference:
My brother stepped out of the phone booth and told me that Mama said we could go on the
roller coaster.
OR
My brother stepped out of the phone booth, looked at me and said: “Guess what, Nancy, Mama
said yes, we can go on the roller coaster.”
Take a minute and say those two examples out loud. You will definitely notice a difference. Creating dialogue makes your story more exciting and more engaging.
And then there’s the Power of the Pause. When you want to create suspense or need your audience to sit up and take notice, PAUSE. It works every single time. A word of caution here – it will seem like an eternity to you, the speaker. But the most dramatic lines are delivered with a longer pause. One thing that helps me stay on track is to silently count to three in my head before I deliver the punch line or dramatic statement.
If you would like to see some of this in action, check out the story I told when I won the Chicago District 30 International Speech Contest. I finished in the top 100 out of 30,000 competitors, and it was my storytelling techniques that helped: Mama Told Me Not to Come. It’s a hoot.
Well, look at this – time has flown by. I have a few more tricks and tips to share with you on storytelling, so I hope you’ll join me next week. I promise it will be well worth your time.
Categories: Positive Attitude Professional Development Professional Speaker
Tags: International Speech Contest, Positive Attitude, Storytelling, Toastmasters International Speech Contest
