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
from 一页纸创意思考术
-
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.
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