10 steps to creating a really strong story. It sounds like a presentation trainer’s cliche, but it’s not.
In business presentations, the story is the thing. There’s a skill and a structure to creating interesting and compelling narratives. A craft started in the verbal tradition by prehistoric man, developed by the ancient Greeks, sharpened by the French, the Italians, Spanish and British over centuries, is now made into a global, multi billion dollar industry by the Americans. Telling stories with a message is what people have always sought to do. And those who are good at it have real value in the places they live and work. Children are brought up on stories with a beginning, middle and end. 1. Jim is the MD of Allcow Communications, a company which helps FTSE 100 companies to sell themselves, and their products better. Tagged as: presentation planning, story structure. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories by Christopher Booker « To Bed With a Trollope.
This book has been defying my attempts to write a review it for the better part of a month and a half — but I think I’ve managed to emerge victorious at last.
The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories by Christopher Booker It’s a longstanding cliché that there are only really a handful of basic plots in the entire canon of Western literature. The cliché is so cliché that it’s somehow gone past cliché and come right out the other side in the form of a 700-plus-page analytical study by former Spectator columnist and Private Eye founder Christopher Booker.
Booker suggests that storytelling serves to pass along moral lessons and models from the older generation to their children and successors, and as a result the basic lessons have coalesced over time into seven basic symbolic ‘plots’ that have formed the primary model for storytelling into the present day. These seven plots are as follows: Like this: Like Loading... Tyler Cowen: Be suspicious of stories. Storytelling lessons from Bill Cosby.
Following up on the last post below concerning good graduation speeches, here's one more from the great Bill Cosby.
Now 73, Dr. Cosby may not be on the radar screens of a much younger generation, but ask any successful comedian working today — young or old — and they will tell you that Bill Cosby is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of comedy. What makes Bill Cosby one of the most compelling entertains of our time is his ability to connect with people and deliver his messages naturally in the form of story. He's the master storyteller. He does so well what most leaders and presenters of all kinds should do: tell real stories from your own life in a way that is relevant and engaging to your audience.
"Don't talk yourself into not being you. " Above: This clip is from the early 1980s. Above: This clip is also from the early 1980s. Above: This time the situation is a bit different as he is being interviewed on The Dick Cavet Show in the early 1970s. H/T Al Pittampalli. The Business Bodhisattva. Nancy Duarte: The secret structure of great talks. 101 Zen Stories.
Zen Stories to Tell Your Neighbors.