SOME THOUGHTS ON THE PUBLIC SPEAKER AS A STORYTELLER

I am no fan of public speaking. It is stressful and hard, and I contend that anyone who loves it is not to be trusted; they are likely a masochist, a narcissist, or worse, a stand-up comedian.  

I am a little conflicted, though, as I also have a deep well of respect for those that do it and do it well. For those that do it well are truly magicians. They can transport you across time and space; bring you to tears and laughter; thrill you, and set your synapses alight until you leave as acolytes and go off and proselytise their virtues to others. 

It is part gift and mostly craft. A craft that most of us are not inclined to learn, as for many, it involves confronting deep fears – just as we are not inclined to learn how to base jump. 

Unlike base jumping, however, learning to speak well in public and, crucially, to be effective at communicating your ideas has a very high probability of resulting in positive outcomes such as career advancement and a very low (but never zero) risk of death. 

I want to offer some ideas that hopefully may help those preparing.  

Your script and your presentation skills are not separate. 

It is possible to wow a crowd with an incredible story and no public speaking skills. It is much harder to wow anyone by speaking dross with confidence. 

 (There are all kinds of exceptions to this, but I’ll write my article on cults of personality another time.)  

When you are confident with your material and message, it is much easier to present confidently. So your work begins with crafting your story. 

The story you are telling is what keeps people interested and hanging on your next word. It is also how you can serve up important information that otherwise would be dry and difficult to digest.  

Storytelling is a complex subject on which countless books have been written; any detail is far beyond the scope of this humble page, but here are some questions to get you thinking. 

What’s the story’s beginning, middle and end? As obvious as this seems, it is helpful to break things down as simply as this.  

What is the dramatic tension of the tale? Or, to put it another way, what is keeping people listening to the end? What do they want to discover/solve/learn? What’s the catharsis that’s waiting for them at the end? 

What’s at stake? Make your subject matter. Make people aware that important stuff is at stake in the story you are telling. If you don’t know the answer to this, what chance does the audience have of caring?  

Who are the main characters? It’s always about people. If you are delivering data, talk about the way it impacts people. How does it affect people? As above, why does this matter?  

What is the thread that runs through your presentation that holds it all together? There are a lot of different ways to do this well. For example, if you are speaking about education spending, tell the story of a student in parallel to the information you are conveying. Use their experience as a centrepiece that everything else hangs off. You will lay bare why your data matters while giving your presentation a story and a shape. 

The Shaggy Dog Story and why plot matters

A shaggy dog story is described as ‘an extremely long-winded anecdote characterised by extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents and terminated by an anticlimax’.  

Does that sound familiar? 

While most often referring originally to a kind of joke, the shaggy dog story is a valuable analogy for the problems that arise when the core elements of a narrative aren’t identified. To stay in charge of the story you are telling, ask yourself, 

What is the journey you are taking us on? 

and 

What are the building blocks that you need to take us on that journey? 

It is why very sophisticated plots have that lovely quality of a piece of precision machinery, where you can feel that if you remove a single element, the whole thing would fall apart.   

On the other side of the coin, you might imagine a child telling you a story about their day, where they say, ‘we went for a walk and then we found a dollar on the ground, and then we went and met Jim and then got an ice cream, and we saw an old woman with a funny hat, and then mum got tired, and we home’. 

When the storyteller is not in command of the essential elements of the story, they can quickly become a sequence of seemingly unrelated ‘irrelevant incidents’. 

This concept is important in plotting a film, and it is important in plotting a presentation. It is how we keep our listeners engaged and hanging on our every word, wondering what will happen next.  

At any given moment, know what you are saying and why 

The textbook example of a boring speech is typified by the speaker droning on interminably. People suggest you shouldn’t read from a script to avoid this happening. Because burying your head in your notes usually means you are not present with the material; instead, devoting your energy to reading the words. I.e. droning on with no variation in your tone. 

The antidote to this is to stay mindful and active with what you are saying and, importantly, know why you are saying it. Changing tack moment to moment, even sentence to sentence, but definitely, paragraph to paragraph. If you don’t make any distinctions between your moments, you are doomed to waffle on. It’s your job as a presenter to be agile as you switch from idea to idea. The first step in preparing for your speaking engagement is identifying the different sections in your script and recognising how they differ from each other. To use an extreme example to make a point: one section might be a joke, another a heartfelt plea and another, important information you want people to remember. We would all understand they require different energy when you deliver them. 

It all comes down to what you are doing at a given moment.   

Stay present.    

Being present is one of the reasons we can positively respond to visibly nervous speakers and be suspicious of overly slick ones. When something is ‘over-rehearsed’*, it can come off as inauthentic, leaving us feeling like we are being sold something. In a way, you have the same problem as the person who drones on without variation; the words are not spoken with meaning, in this case, because they sound rehearsed and performed. It raises our defences, and we say, ‘I’m not buying’. 

So take your time and find yourself in the moment. Speak the words you are saying with intention, and stay aware of their meaning as you say them to your audience. Make eye contact, take a breath, and get the job done.

*I’m not sure if over-rehearsed exists, at least not in this context. When someone is labelled over-rehearsed, it just means that the immediacy is lost, and the performer has found themselves on autopilot. I.e. not present.

Some tools to stay present 

Take your time. Rushing to get through it means you aren’t present from moment to moment. 

Pauses are fine. Pause to regroup if you need to. Pauses can often equal drama. 

Make eye contact. No need to stare down a particular person, but moving across the room and engaging different people is a great way to stay present. 

You are speaking to people. You are not delivering a speech; you are speaking to people and sharing ideas and stories.

It is sometimes helpful to think you are answering an unheard question. If someone asks you what you had for breakfast, you will answer with easy unfiltered energy, and you will be present. When you are speaking as if there is no question to answer, it can lead to the speaker’s nemesis: 

The Void

The Void is what I call the phenomenon that occurs when someone is not speaking to anyone in particular and they begin to feel it. It’s where the words lose their meaning and where the fundamental circuit of speaker and listener breaks. Their words begin to ring out.

The Void can come and go during an excellent speech. The way of banishing it is ALWAYS to speak to someone directly and, crucially, for them to hear you. Find a friendly face in the crowd if need be. Talk to them. They are interested. 

One of my favourite tools when recording the voice and the Void arrives is to sit another person across from the person and have them listen actively to what they’re saying. That way, we are allowing the circuit to complete. 

You are not delivering a speech. You are telling a story to people that want to hear it.

Nicholas Pollock 2022