TOT 55: Story Telling

Story telling is a wonderful technique used to make presentation more interesting and appealing. In mediation training it is used to drive home a point.

The following steps are required to be followed while using Story telling as part of presentation:

Identify the objective – drive home point.

1. Am I telling the story to make the concept clearer?
2. Am I telling the story to make the trainees understand the importance of procedural aspects?
3. Why am I telling this story?
4. Should I tell this story at all?
5. What difference would this story make in their understanding?

Create a powerful introduction

1. Use a single line introduction to the story
2. Before telling the story, tell them in one sentence what is the story all about?
   Example
   Let me tell you a story of “a rich sister who had filed suit for partition of against her two poor brothers.”
   Let me tell the story of a “daughter for partition filed against her father who had sexually abused his daughter”.
   I will share with you the real-life story of “a respondent wife in a divorce petition who had all alone seen the long suffering of her son dying of cancer”.  
3. The powerful introduction should create interest in the audience. They should physically move/lean forward in all enthusiasm to listen to the story

Voice modulation – USE of tone

See the words in bold letters in examples given in (2) above. Stress the words appropriately, bring an emotional element. Give a pause. Make the listeners feel that you have experienced what you are telling or you have experienced what the original narrator had told you. You are not playing drama. You are sharing something which a live example.

Structure the story

1. Give explanation in two or three lines as to what the story is all about.
2. Tell the story in 5-10 lines. (Depending on the time)
3. Tell the key learning points from the story.

What makes the story very appealing?

1. Its shortness
2. Emotional component.
3. Factual Information to which listeners can easily relate to.
4. Strong message the story carries with it.
5. The concept or the key learning points taken from the story.

CHECKS

1. Never tell a story which goes beyond five minutes.
2. Never tell a story which is not relevant to the topic of presentation.
3. Do not get into explanatory modes.
4. Frame sentences in the mind before telling a story.
5. Project the concept at the end in a single line or two liner statement/s.
6. Work with paper and pencil as though you are a script writer, before actually presenting the story.

“A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses the moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”

Graham Greene
Novelist and Author

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All Copyrights reserved by the author S. Susheela