The Content conundrum: Trusting that single, unimpressive, meek little point!
So, we come to the final element of an impactful speech: Dynamic content!
Remember our three determining questions:
· What is your persuasive intent?
· What is your delight strategy?
· What is your dynamic content?
The final question is phrased to highlight the fact that when we come to the question of what to say - the content - we want that content to be dynamic. To literally explode. Which is where we get the word dynamite from. If its dynamic, its explosive. We want to think this way to get away from listing facts or figures.
Robert McKee, who taught screenwriting to a generation of writers (most of whom were not screenwriters) minted a memorable phrase: Exposition as ammunition. In any story or speech, a certain amount of information must be imparted to the audience or readership. It may be background, but nonetheless essential. However, to list information would be dull, so one creates a dramatic setting to give these facts some buzz and life. In detective fiction for example, a common device is a courtroom setting, a coroner’s court maybe, and the facts are then rendered dramatic in the conflict of a cross-examination situation.
Exposition as ammunition.
It’s a good idea, and gets us to the heart of the question: What is your dynamic content? Not only, “Ok, what do I want to say?” but rather to see the what as capable of exploding out to more than the sum of its parts. If you think your basic point is dull, then no amount of style and experience can rescue the animal. There is no hiding vacuous content.
The F/F statement.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever received on constructing a speech was to be encouraged at the outset to write out a Focus and Function statement;
- Function – what do I want to do to the audience.
- Focus - what one thing do I want to say to the audience.
Oral success turns on the word “one.”
We have a problem as human beings that is well known to communicators. Its a characteristic of the brain, that the more points we make to any audience, the more points the audience makes up!
I once conducted surveys for Christian priests wedded to the three-point sermon method. In over forty analyses over three continents, a mere twenty minutes after a three pointer had been delivered, less than 12% of listeners could recall all three points. Even more interesting, when pressed to recall them by the interviewer, 70% made up three entirely different points. Same with stories. Tell more than one and the audience, in recall, will create their own amalgam narrative.
Moral: If you want to get your point across, make only one!
That’s not as hard as it sounds. As one preacher said after my presentation, “I still love the three-point sermon – because it gives me the opportunity to say one thing three different ways.”
Amen!
If the speaker’s subpoints keep reinforcing the main point…fine.
But if you want the best chance of your audience getting your point, depart from the rule of one at your peril.
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Okay how does a master do it? Time to take our final look at Martin Luther King’s wonder speech, the I have a dream speech.
· We’ve seen what he was trying to do…turn fear into hope.
· We’ve seen how he created a delightful experience of this through his technique of painting vivid snapshots of deepest longings fulfilled.
· But what’s his content? What was his point?
Just this: Keep going in this peaceful struggle…we will win!
That’s the entire content. That’s the basic point.
And his speech is constructed to make the same point seven ways.
- We (the Black people) of America were promised freedom in the Emancipation Proclamation one hundred years ago by Abraham Lincoln. We’ve come to cash this check, he said.
- Now is the time for this. He speaks of the “fierce urgency of now,” repeating the phrase
“now is the time” four times.
- We must rise and “meet physical force with soul force.” He was heading off the criticism of his rival Malcolm X who was telling the same people to use violence. King affirms this “marvellous new militancy…” but cautions that it “…must not lead to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by the presence here today, have come to realise that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.”
- We must keep going. Six repetitions of “we can never be satisfied” with the progress so far.
- You have struggled, you have bled. A poignant paragraph acknowledging the suffering so far.
- We will succeed. I have seen it. The “I have a dream” section, which paints the vivid picture of possibility. Nine repetitions of the famous phrase.
- We will do it with faith. It will take “faith.” He is trying to ensure they gain power for the struggle. “With this faith” repeated four times.
- Let freedom ring. His final cascade of vivid word pictures of victory.
Notice though, the central point is simple and continually reinforced: we are going to win this struggle!
They cared.
The reception of a great speech is nevertheless a mystery. King was hoping this would be known as the “bad check” speech. But his dropping in of the “I have a dream” module blew that away. No harm done. Same main point.
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The hardest discipline of any great speech maker is to trust that the content focus is dynamic enough, and will explode when it is supposed to. There is an “orality killer,” where you look at the main point and think, “gosh, this is so insubstantial, I need to put more in.” Well, maybe. After all, King did, but crucially, what he added in was not another point, but another way of driving home the point.
Other useful cliches remind us of the importance of this. Less is more. Keep it simple, stupid. Keep the main thing the main thing. And my favourite; subtract to impact.
Make one point.
Trust it.
If you release it with words that create an experience of it, the content will become dynamic and nuclear in its effects.
That’s as good an outcome as anyone would wish.
Even when you think (and you always will) that the point itself is unimpressive!
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