This note is based on my reading of the book Connect Using Humor and Story_ How I Got 18 Laughs 3 Applauses in a 7 Minute Persuasive Speech by Ramakrishna, as well as other books and sources.
1. The Story
Always try to identify the type of story presented in the speech.
7 classic types of storyline for adventures and heroes
回家 Returning home
Back to the previous spot
Related to family and carefree stage得胜 Victory
Pursuit excellency
Defeat all enemies复仇 Revenge
Defeat and revenge on competitor
Final victory
Self-development through competing屠龙 Dragonslayer
Defeat impossible barricade and obstacle
Defeat the environmental and non-human difficulties重生 Reborn
Changes and transformation
Wait silence and change寻爱 Journey for love
Motivation based on love itself
Help others to find love登山 Climbing a mountain
Spend long years on things and step by step to achieve the goal
4C in story design
- conflict
- character
- causality
- complication
2. The Roles in a story
- Protagonist
- Antoganist
- Supporting character
3. Structure a story
- A story should involve multiple conflicts
In conflicts, solutions and related obstacles will be repeated again and again. Therefore they could be used to engage audiences. - Showcase the final changes
The final changes and decisive conflict will be the key to the story. Need to develop a believable explanation with the core message of the story.
4. Management of audiences' expectation and empathy
- Work along audiences' expectation and unexpectation to create humor lines
- Work with expectation: related to audiences and shorten the distances
- Work with unexpectation: create humor and engage audiences
- Create a list of what is expected and not expected of your audiences and then make use of them to create speech lines
5. Rhetoric devices in a speech
- Rule of the three: expected, expected, unexpected
- Presenting different perspectives: avoid preaching and bragging, figuring out the story with audiences
- Dialogue: no more than two rounds of dialogue, make it short. Use it to deliver the core message
- Visualize your speech: play around the five different senses
- Alliteration: the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. To engage audiences and their expectation.
- Anaphora and epistrophe: same words at the beginning or the end to engage the audiences
- Simile and parallel
- Non-verbal expression instead of verbal description
6. Core Message
- Use the story and the final change to showcase the core message
- Avoid unfold the core message yourself, use dialogue or others
- Use metaphor in the speech and repeat it, appealing to audiences five senses to make it stick
- Catchphrase
- Structure here: story, core message, connection to audiences (application of the message )
7. Editing
- Keep the description and narrative short and keep every sentence count
- value the pause and silence to allow audiences to imagine
8. Equation for creating laugh lines
“Premise + Pause + Punch Line + Pause = Laughter”
e.g.
“People exaggerate that parents in India pressure their children to only become a doctor or an engineer. That’s not true. They don’t just pressure. <Pause 1> They blackmail <Pause 2>.”
Punch Line should create surprise by saying something contrary to the audience’s expectation.
