The Perfect Speech: An Emotional Roller Coaster

 

“Many of the best talks have a narrative structure that loosely follows a detective story. The speaker starts out by presenting a problem and then describes the search for a solution. There’s an ‘aha’ moment, and the audience’s perspective shifts in a meaningful way.”

This advice comes from Chris Anderson, curator of the TED Conference, which since 1984 has brought scientists, innovators, and extraordinary individuals to the stage. (...) Anderson has coached countless TED speakers for their presentations and is therefore frequently asked what makes a truly great speech. One of his most important recommendations is to think of every presentation as a story and to build it around a narrative structure. But what narrative structures are there—and which ones actually work? Here is a brief overview.

The Classics

Many of the classic structures for speeches and presentations will be familiar to you because you have encountered them in countless talks.

There is the report, in which fact is systematically added to fact. At the end, the speaker briefly summarizes the material, while leaving the actual analysis to the audience.

Then there is the discussion, which also presents a sequence of facts but transforms each piece of information into an insight. The conclusion is therefore not merely a summary but an evaluation that offers genuine added value.

Another familiar structure is the recommendation, essentially a classic sales pitch in which a solution is promoted. It begins by highlighting a need, which is then resolved through the proposed solution.

And finally, there is the drama, perhaps the most enduring classic of effective public speaking. Here, the audience is led to a difficult low point before being rescued at the end by a solution—a form of redemption.

Do the Classics Still Work?

Many of these structures appear logical. They are rooted in the way academic thinking teaches us to reason: one piece of information follows another until the conclusion naturally emerges.

But do these linear methods still work today? Do they still succeed in an age in which, according to Peter Bregman, we interrupt focused work every eighteen minutes to switch tasks—or simply to distract ourselves?

Or worse still: according to the Microsoft Work Trend Index, knowledge workers experience interruptions every two minutes during a standard nine-to-five workday—an average of up to 275 interruptions per day.

 

The Postmodern Challenge

To be honest, the structure of simply piling fact upon fact never worked particularly well—not even before the frantic pace of the internet age.

In his book Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work, Dan Roam shares an anecdote that illustrates this perfectly. Radio host Terry Gross interviews Jon Stewart. Stewart is a comedian, longtime host of The Daily Show, and also well known for reviewing books. During the interview, Gross asks whether he actually reads all the books he reviews.

Stewart quips that of course he does—he reads both the blurb on the front cover and the one on the back. Then he offers a more serious answer:

“Some weeks we review as many as four books, and some of them are pretty hefty—for example, historical works. But I read fairly quickly and try to absorb as much as I can, and I’ve become pretty good at retaining all that information... for about four to six hours. Then it disappears from my brain for the rest of my life (...).”

He continues: “Yes, I absorb the facts in a book intensively and suddenly become—let’s say—an expert on the construction of the Pentagon... and then, around eight o’clock that evening, I think, ‘Really? I can’t even remember there’s a building with five sides.’”

Have you ever felt the same way as Jon Stewart? Enthralled by a book or a speech while you are reading or listening—but only a short time later, almost everything has vanished?

When our brains are flooded with facts without being given the opportunity to process or deepen them, very little becomes anchored in long-term memory. We may experience a short-lived effect on our attention, but not a lasting learning effect.

Linear, sequential presentation structures are therefore rarely the most effective way to leave a lasting impression. They also work against the audience’s natural attention curve. Most audiences are highly attentive at the beginning of a presentation because they are curious about the speaker. Attention typically rises again toward the end. In between, however, many listeners struggle to stay focused.

Ironically, the speaker’s attention curve usually runs in exactly the opposite direction. Most presenters begin somewhat nervous and need time to warm up before gradually reaching peak performance. Once they have delivered the climax of their talk—once they have finally revealed their big idea—their energy often starts to decline.

That is why today’s stories must reach their point, their climax, much more quickly. Speakers have to work against shrinking attention spans—and against the constant competition of the smartphone in the audience’s hands. Great speakers therefore invite their audiences on an emotional roller coaster.

Emotional Roller Coasters

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the public for the first time, his excitement was unmistakable. The Apple fans attending Macworld in 2007 already knew the ritual with which Jobs traditionally concluded his keynote, introducing a groundbreaking innovation with the words:

“There is one more thing…”

 But on January 9, 2007, Jobs opened differently: 

“This is a day... I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years...”

It was immediately clear that he intended to savor the moment. He did so by feeding his audience a series of very small bites. Each one was a story in itself.

First, Jobs announced that Apple had completely reinvented the iPod and was about to launch a new music player. Then he revealed that the company had also revolutionized the telephone. Finally, he declared that Apple had reinvented the internet for your pocket and was about to launch that as well.

For a long time, he kept the audience in suspense about what these products might actually look like. Every single feature was presented as though it were the keynote’s ultimate highlight. One climax followed another—until Jobs finally revealed that he had been talking about just one device capable of doing all these things: the iPhone.

After January 9, 2007, the world would never be the same. Established phone manufacturers lost their market dominance and, in many cases, disappeared altogether. The way people interacted with computers and screens changed fundamentally, and entire generations transformed the way they communicated and consumed information.

And all of this was helped along by a speech that did not follow the traditional structure of a business presentation, but instead took its audience on an emotional roller coaster.

The Sparkline

Nancy Duarte gave this pattern of delivering ideas in small, carefully staged increments a name: Sparkline.

To develop the concept, she analyzed not only Steve Jobs’s keynote but also speeches by Martin Luther King Jr., Leonard Bernstein, Richard Feynman, and many others. In each case, she discovered the same distinctive pattern: a rhythm that she visualized as a line constantly moving up and down.

The line begins at a relatively low level by describing the current reality—what is. Very soon after the speech begins, it rises toward a higher level representing the desired future—what could be. Throughout their presentations, great speakers move continuously between these two states. Again and again, they introduce new evidence and fresh ideas that reinforce the importance of moving from the current reality toward the desired one.

Speakers who want to inspire action continually renew motivation through these small narrative increments. Speakers who already possess the solution gradually unveil it, revealing piece by piece why their solution represents the desired future.

According to Duarte, it is precisely this constant movement between what is and what could be that makes these speeches so effective. Rather than sustaining one long arc across the entire presentation, they create a succession of smaller arcs of tension and release.

In other words, it is far more effective to alternate between claim and evidence than to walk an audience through a lengthy, detail-heavy plan.

So invite your audience onto an emotional roller coaster—and keep reading.

More about the “Art of Storytelling” for Leaders in “Between the Lines – a Guide to Storytelling”, by Petra Sammer. Now on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0ax3rLfy

Follow me on LinkedIn, get my newsletter SAMMERy and find more insights and tips on effective storytelling on the blog Amazing Stories

This text was written by a human; AI tools were used for translation, spelling, and grammar review. Photo by Gabriel Valdez on Unsplash