How to tell stories in speeches and presentations

TJ’s Insights

May 26, 2005

New Books, TJ Walker’s “Media Training A-Z”
http://www.mediatrainingworldwide.com/mediatrainingaz.html
“Presentation Training A-Z” http://www.mediatrainingworldwide.com/presentaz.html

Re-Live stories, Don’t Re-Tell Stories

I often tell my presentation training clients to illustrate their key points by telling stories. For many people, telling stories is the single most difficult thing they can imagine doing during a speech (somehow it seems easier to rattle off a list of bullet points on a PowerPoint).

I give my clients 12 key elements that are essential to story telling; I provide other helpful tips. There are even entire books written on the craft of story telling. But the reality is you don’t need all of that if you can focus on one simple principle:

Don’t tell stories; instead, re-live stories.

The beauty of this approach is that it requires zero imagination, creativity or theatrical skill. All you have to do is re-live an experience or conversation with a client, customer or colleague and then tell your audience what you are seeing and feeling as you re-live it.

That’s it.

That’s really all there is to story telling.

So instead of telling your audience what you said to someone, just say it as though you were talking to that person in your story live. Don’t tell your audience how the person responded to you. Instead, just talk back to yourself as if you were that other person. Describe your physical surroundings as you are seeing them again (don’t just leave out the details of your setting as most people do).

Then, your audience will “see” your ideas come alive before them and they will remember your stories and the message behind them.

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Author of Media Training A-Z
& Presentation Training A-Z

TJ Walker
Media Training Worldwide
212-764-4955

Media Training Worldwide provides more media and presentation training workshops and seminars (54 separate courses) than any other company in the world. Media Training Worldwide also publishes more than 100 presentation training books, DVDs, CDs, and other information products and is the largest presentation/media training publisher in the world. For a product catalog or more information on training services call 800-755-7220 or visit http://mediatrainingworldwide.com/mediatrainingcatalogapril2004.pdf.

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