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Storytelling
Introduction
As a presenter, your job is to keep your audience interested so your message gets across. To help with that, we start by identifying the audience, then look at how storytelling allows you to share your message effectively.
What Is On This Page?
What Is On This Page?
Why Use Storytelling?
Why Use Storytelling?
Stories help connect your audience with your message. They can take boring data and facts and make them personal, because stories are narratives crafted to take the audience on a journey. Just like a novel or a documentary, stories have a plot, characters, and themes.
Stories impact our brains differently than facts.
Hearing a story activates language processing, the sensory cortex, and other areas of our brain. We hear a story and often try to make it our own and share it with others.
“A story is the only way to activate parts in the brain so that a listener turns the story into their own idea and experience” (Uri Hasson, as cited in Widrich, 2012).
Neuroeconomics pioneer, Paul Zak, says that stories have a potential to change our brain chemistry.
"…Even the simplest narrative can elicit powerful empathic response by triggering the release of neurochemicals like cortisol and oxytocin, provided it is highly engaging and follows the classic dramatic arc … " (from Brain Pickings).
Watch
Watch
This video by the Seneca Sandbox gives an overview of storytelling for digital projects.
Stories are powerful tools and can used in your class assignments, presentations, when pitching business ideas, negotiations, and more.
Defining and Engaging Your Audience
Defining and Engaging Your Audience
Define Your Audience
Define Your Audience
Before you craft your story it is important to understand who your audience is. For a story to resonate you need to create a connection between speaker and audience. Thinking about the audience can help you build a more personalized presentation which in turn will help make your content resonate.
Consider the three questions below to help you understand who is watching you.
How big is the audience?
How big is the audience?
Will you be presenting to a small group? Or a larger group?
With a small audience you may be able to speak less formally, include more personal stories, and go back-and-forth with questions. For larger groups you may need to save questions or discussion for the end.
What's your relationship?
What's your relationship?
Will you be presenting to your professor and classmates? A future employer? A potential customer?
Your relationship may impact choices in your visuals, examples, and your overall tone. Can your presentation be friendly and eye-catching? Or do you need to keep a formal tone?
What do they already know?
What do they already know?
Is your audience familiar with your topic? Can you skim over the basics, or are there terms that are new that you will need to define?
Consider the common ground you hold with an audience and try to find a connection point from which you can tell a story.
Audience Engagement
Audience Engagement
Once you know who your audience is, think about how you can keep them connected and interested in your content. There are many ways to keep your audience tuned-in. Including interaction in your presentation is particularly effective, so while you craft your story think about whether you can add in interactive components.
Look at some options for interaction by clicking the questions below.
Do you need information from your attendees?
Do you need information from your attendees?
If so, polling your audience can extract responses that can help you direct your presentation. Results can be shown in real time and help spark further conversations.
Do you want attendees to interact?
Do you want attendees to interact?
A question and answer session can be started and facilitated by the Presenter asking a question and Attendees unmuting their mic to answer. Alternatively, Attendees could also answer by Chat and type in their responses. A hybrid of both could be a moderated chat where the host reads chat responses and attendees respond to some of those comments.
Would games be appropriate for this audience?
Would games be appropriate for this audience?
Creating several multiple-choice questions with point values for the quickest response can get your audience fired up. At the end of each round, the leaderboard can be displayed to see who is on top.
Do your attendees have information to share?
Do your attendees have information to share?
In-person meetings naturally lend themselves to social networking. The same type of networking can be accomplished with breakout rooms where people can hop into different rooms depending on the topic.
Third-party apps might cover some of the above engagement techniques and use an attendee's own digital device to interact with your presentation. See our Choosing the Right Tools page for some suggestions.
The Dramatic Arc
The Dramatic Arc
What is a Dramatic Arc?
What is a Dramatic Arc?
Now that you have your audience in mind, how do you build out your story?
There are many ways to tell a story, but one method we like to use is the Dramatic Arc. A Dramatic Arc visually shows a story's full progression from start to finish. It is different from a plot, which is the actual events that happen in the story. The dramatic arc is the path/sequence of your plot.
The Dramatic Arc works like this:
Exposition is where the story starts, explaining the set up, characters, and possibly adding a question.
Then we get our Rising Action, where tension starts to build.
This is followed by the Climax, which is the pivotal moment in the story that changes EVERYTHING.
Falling Action is when the main problem in the story resolves and the story moves towards a conclusion.
Resolution is the end of the story, where you learn the conflict is resolved and ties up loose ends.
Another way to think of your presentation as a story is to build it in three parts - the beginning, middle, and end.
The beginning should create tension, e.g. establish a problem and a potential solution, or ask a question and suggest an answer. The middle should bounce within the conflict set at the beginning, showing your audience what things are like, and what they could be. The end should show the final solution and why it is appealing. See this in practice in the video below.
Watch
Watch
Similar to the dramatic arc, the zig-zagging structure Nancy Duarte discusses in this video can be used to build a successful presentation and keep the audience interested. Steve Jobs and Martin Luther King Jr. are used as examples.
Read more in her article, Structure Your Presentation Like a Story.
Exercise: Understanding the Dramatic Arc
Exercise: Understanding the Dramatic Arc
Click on the i icons to learn more about each part of the dramatic arc for a digital story.
Apply the Dramatic Arc
Apply the Dramatic Arc
This worksheet will let you review a story and map out which scenes fall under different parts of the dramatic arc. You can choose an existing story or use the worksheet to plot out your own story.
Build an Outline
Build an Outline
Why Use an Outline?
Why Use an Outline?
Having an outline for your presentation can make it easier when building your materials and running the live presentation. An outline can help you map out key points, consider the order of your content, plan visuals, and will help you set an agenda for your final presentation.
Consider the Goal
Consider the Goal
Are you persuading? Educating? Selling? Consider what you want to accomplish and who your presentation is aimed at.
List the Main Points
List the Main Points
Write out all the main points you need to speak on, then build them out with sub-points. Move them around as needed to find an order that works for you.
Connect the Dots
Connect the Dots
With your main points done, begin making connections with your research, and think of how you can transition between points.
Build Your Agenda
Build Your Agenda
Once you have a final outline you can turn it into an agenda. Having an agenda slide in your presentation lays out the structure of your presentation and shows progression. You can highlight each of your talking points by using section headers.
You can include an agenda at the beginning of your presentation, before each new section, or anywhere your audience might need a reminder.
Watch
Watch
Communication coach Alex Lyon gives an in-depth discussion of presentation planning. Look at how to structure an introduction, body, and conclusion for your talk.
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