To ensure that my emailed newsletters arrive safely, please add my email address to your address book.
For the printer-friendly version of this newsletter, click here.

February 2012 Newsletter

Greetings!
.

Emotional Engagement via
10 Storytelling Tips!

Opening:

A masterful speech is one that incorporates stimulating personal stories which weave structure, content and delivery into one seamless whole and as a result, consciously and positively affect others’ lives.

Promise:

Whether or not you are in a speech contest, the value of your masterful speech is to maintain the audience’s interest throughout, have them remember your important message and ultimately, make a positive difference in their lives?

Roadmap:

I invite you to examine the 10 storytelling tips and see if you have incorporated them into your speech, contest one or other.

In This Issue

• 10 Storytelling Tips

• Special 25% Discount on my new e-Book ONLY for my newsletter subscribers! Discount extended to March 15, 2012.

Quotation of the Month

"A great presentation is one that has the intellectual power to move listeners to a new way of thinking and the emotional power to move them to new ways of behaving.”

~ David Brooks,
1990 World Champion
of Public Speaking

Storytelling TIPS

• Choose a personal story that demonstrates a universal emotion, that has had an impact on your life, that has taught you a lesson, one which you are ready to share. Let your story lead to their story!
• Tap into the audience’s minds with a question, quotation, statistic so they can reflect on their own life experiences before you transport them into your story. To affect, they must reflect!
• Establish conflict early in your story, increase tension and curiosity until the conflict is resolved by the process you learned, one which altered your thinking and changed your behaviour. Conflict is the hook of the story!
• Use characters and their dialogue, avoiding too much narration. Dialogue is the heart of a story!
• Share your human frailties to your audience throughout your story so they can relate and be endeared to you. Make yourself similar, not special!
• Uncover a degree of humour to bring levity to possibly a serious topic. When they laugh, they relax, they learn and then they remember your point. Don’t add humour; uncover it in stories, characters, dialogue!
• Be conversational by asking ‘you-focused’ questions or statements, touching base with the audience periodically. Stop giving speeches, start having conversations!
• Be specific re details (time, place, date). Specificity creates credibility!
• Create different places on the stage for various scenes... step out of a scene when you have to address the audience with an important point. Create scenes and commit to them!
• Use pauses judiciously at appropriate times to create a dramatic effect and time for the audience to reflect. Pause is the technique, silence is the message!
  

Whether or not you are competing in a contest, or simply giving a speech, go on an emotional storytelling journey, share a lesson, have fun and take the audience with you!

Many more storytelling techniques in my book:

This month I continue to offer the special discounted offer -- available only to my newsletter subscribers. 25% off the brand new e-book version of my book: “Speeches That Will Leave Them Speechless” (RRP $11.99). This limited time offer will expire on March 15, 2012... ACT NOW if you don’t yet have my book! To get your 25% discount simply click this link and type the discount code "leapyear" into the discount code box. Be sure to click the "update cart" button before heading to the checkout.

Applying the concepts contained in this book will definitely magnify your speaking success and give you a competitive edge over other speakers. CLICK HERE to BUY NOW Remember to enter your special 25% Discount Code: leapyear

Feel free to browse through my past newsletters, by clicking here:
http://kathrynmackenzie.com/newsletters.html

I invite you to join me next month, when we examine the letter “F” as it relates to another storytelling skill.

Until then, Happy Speaking!!