The Power of Story: The Secret Ingredient to Making Any Speech Memorable

Ideas are not really alive
if they are confined to one person’s mind.

Nancy Duarte, Speech coach and author

We love stories because they are engaging, they ignite the imagination, and they have the potential to teach us something. You have likely sat around a campfire or the dinner table telling stories? That is because stories are the primary way we understand the world causing Rhetorical scholar Walter Fisher (1985) to call us homo narrans–storytelling humans. Not only is storytelling important in conversation, but it is also important to speechmaking. It is no surprise then, that when researchers looked at 500 TED Talks, they found of the TED talks that go viral, 65% included personal stories (Gallo, 2016).

Professional speakers, college students, politicians, business leaders, and teachers are all beginning to understand the benefits of telling stories in speeches. Increasingly, business leaders are encouraged to move away from the old model of sharing the vision and the mission to a new model of telling the story of the business.  Academic literature points out that teachers who use stories can help students understand and recall information (Dicks, 2018).  For years, politicians have been coached to include a story in their speeches (Dennings, 2005). They do it because it works, and it is bound in science.

In short, people don’t pay attention to boring things. The story is one way to engage and help ideas come alive.  Cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham (2009) says, “The human mind seems exquisitely tuned to understand and remember stories—so much that psychologists sometimes refer to stories as ‘psychologically privileged,’ meaning that they are treated differently in memory than other types of material.”

The goal of public speaking is to plant an idea into the minds of your listeners and the most effective way to accomplish that is through a story. Here are three major principles about storytelling:

1. Stories, when told properly, will ignite both the reason center and the emotion center of your audience’s brains making them not only more effective in the moment but also more memorable in long run.
2. Stories activate the little voices in the audience’s heads and help them think creatively about problems. This activation encourages audiences to act on the idea as opposed to just being passive listeners.
3. The best way to tell a story is to connect it to a message, offer concrete details, and follow a predetermined plotline.

The best way to learn about how to write a good story is to see numerous examples of good stories in action. Watch the numerous videos illustrating how the story is used . This chapter is different from standard textbooks on the subject because it includes more examples than text.  You will only get deep learning if you take the time to watch the video clips!

Tell me the fact and I’ll learn.
Tell me the truth and I’ll believe.
But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.

 –Ancient proverb

Stories Engage the Audience and Make a Point

In under four minutes, Mark Bezos, tells a memorable story. He makes us laugh, allows us to see the situation, and then uses all the emotion and visualization he has created to make a powerful point. A good story draws us in and helps us connect with the person and their idea.

Watch A life lesson from a volunteer firefighter (4 mins) on TED

The brain doesn’t pay attention to boring things.

– John Medina, author of Brain Rules

Stories Help Ideas Stick

Stories are sticky. A well-told story “sticks” to our brains and attaches to our emotions (Heath & Heath, 2008).  A speaker can tell a story in such a way that the audience “sees” the story in their mind’s eye and “feels” the emotions of the story. In some situations, an audience may become so involved in the story they “react” by making facial expressions or gasping in surprise. By “seeing the story” and physically reacting to the story, the audience is moved from a passive listener to an active participant.

Think about college teachers you have had who told stories as part of their lectures. Did it help you to listen? Did it help you to learn? Chances are it did. Researchers Kromka and Goodby (2019) put it to the test on one hundred ninety-four undergraduate students. One group listened to a lecture that included a lesson with a story, while others just heard the lesson’s key points. Students that heard the narrative had more sustained attention to the lecture and they did better on a test of short-term recall. The stories helped them remember the material, but there was an added benefit.  The students who heard the narrative liked the teacher more and were more likely to take another course from the instructor in the future.

Jane Goodall explains how her stories about her time spent with chimpanzees engaged people’s interest in greater ways than just information about them (Schrobsdorff, 2021).

“If one wants to change attitudes, you have to reach the heart.
You can reach the heart by telling stories,
not by arguing with people’s intellects.”
Jane Goodall

Watch Jane Goodall, a Portrait of Enduring Hope (3 minutes) on Youtube.

Stories Help the Audience Become Emotionally Engaged

“Emotions are the condiments of speech,” according to speech coach Nancy Duarte (n.d). They add spice and flavor to your talk. Emotions such as passion, vulnerability, excitement, and fear are particularly powerful.  Researchers at Ohio State have a word for that sense of being carried away into the world of a story. They call it transportation.  Their research demonstrated that people can get so immersed in a story they hardly notice the world around them. Audiences can be transported by stories as facts and stories as fiction (Green & Brock, 2000).  Narrative transportation theory proposes that when people lose themselves their intentions and attitudes may change to align with the characters in the story. As speakers, our goal should be to help our audience get lost in the story. Sometimes that means telling our own stories, sometimes it means telling the stories of others, and other times telling a hypothetical story.

You’ve probably heard of an fMRI. It’s the machine that measures blood flow to the brain. Scientists used fMRI machines to measure what happened when someone is telling a story and when someone is listening to that story. What they found is exciting. When they compared the speaker’s brain to the listener’s brains, they noticed the brains were lighting up in the same places (Hasson, et al. 2012).  When the speaker described something emotional, the audience was feeling the emotion and the emotional centers of their brains were lighting up.  Princeton researcher, Uri Hasson (2012) calls this brain synching, “neural coupling.”

Consider a study at Emory University that noticed differences in how brains respond to texture words,  “she had a rough day” versus non-texture words “she had a bad day.” (Lacey, et al.,2012).  The texture words activated sensory parts of the brain. When telling a story, find creative and tactile descriptions to engage your audience.

Imagine you pull up to a flashing red stoplight at an intersection. Seeing it in your mind activates the visual part of your brain. Now, imagine a loved one giving you a pat on the back. Once you imagine it,  your tactile center will light up. This is quite powerful when you think about it. When you hear a story, you don’t just hear it, but you feel it, visualize it,  and simulate it. 

Dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins are what David Philips calls the “angel’s cocktail.” He suggests speakers should intentionally create stories to activate each of these hormones. By telling a story in which you build suspense, you increase dopamine which increases focus, memory, and motivation. Telling a story in which the audience can empathize with a character increases oxytocin, the bonding hormone which is known to increase generosity and trust. Finally, making people laugh can activate feel-good endorphins which help people feel more relaxed, more creative, and more focused.

Because of neural coupling (our brain waves synching) and transportation (getting lost in a story), the audience members begin to see the world of the person in the story. Because of hormonal changes, they feel their situation and can empathize.  A thoughtfully crafted story has the power to help the audience believe in a cause and care about the outcome.

 Time and time,
when faced with the task of persuading a group of managers
to get enthusiastic about a major change,
storytelling was the only thing that worked.
 Steve Denning, the Leaders Guide to Storytelling

Stories Inspire Action

The conventional view has always been when you speak, you try to get the listeners to pay attention to you. The way you get them to pay attention is to keep the little voice inside their heads quiet. If it stays quiet, then your message will get through. Stephen Denning in The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling suggests an alternative view. He challenges speakers to tell stories to work in harmony with the voices in people’s heads. He says that you don’t want your audience to ignore their voice; you want to tell a story in a way that awakens their little voice to tell its own story. You awaken their voice and then you give it something to do. He advocates using stories as springboards to help the audience think about situations so they can begin to mentally solve problems. In this way, you are not speaking to an audience but rather you are inviting the audience to participate with you.

Stories translate information in a way that connects with the audience’s emotions

Storytelling is a potent tool for teaching, selling, or convincing, engaging various parts of the brain beyond mere information processing (Seneca Libraries, 2014). Unlike straight facts, stories can plant ideas and emotions, making them more effective in marketing and idea acceptance. Learning to write and tell stories is recommended for presentations, assignments, business pitches, and negotiations.  Crafting a story involves utilizing the dramatic arc, incorporating emotion, and being concise in conveying the narrative (Seneca Libraries, 2014).

Watch Storytelling (4 minutes) on YouTube

Stories Help People Engage With Topics

When incorporated into presentations, stories humanize the message, making it more engaging and relatable. Effective research communication requires striking a balance between storytelling and factual presentation. Storytelling, as a communication medium, has the power to change beliefs and sway opinions. Reports and news stories follow different formats, with reports focusing on data and facts, while news stories emphasize narrative and meaning (Duarte, 2014).. The key is to tell a story with data, creating a pattern and rhythm to keep presentations interesting. Great presentations spread ideas and enhance organizational recognition, emphasizing the importance of effective storytelling.

Watch How do I share a story that engages my audience and what were the benefits of business storytelling? (4 minutes) on YouTube

Story Changes the Brain Chemistry in Listeners

Paul Zak told audience members a story and then measured the chemicals their bodies released during this story.  His conclusion is that story changes brain chemistry and makes individuals more empathetic. In this case, they were more likely to donate money to charity.  Watch this video as Zak talks about a universal story structure that includes exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement.

Watch Empathy, neurochemistry, and the dramatic arc: Paul Zak at the Future of StoryTelling 2012 (6 mins) on YouTube

Stories Can Have Drawbacks

While storytelling can be used positively, it can have drawbacks. A story can be more memorable than the point.  If the audience remembers your story without the purpose of the story, you missed it. In the teacher’s study mentioned before, students had better short-term recall when the teacher told a narrative. The study also reported that listening to stories increased student cognitive load and some students basically used up their “brainpower” to remembering extraneous information instead of the lesson. The lesson here is to make sure the story reinforces a point and to make sure that the point is clear.

Because stories draw people in emotionally, there can be ethical challenges. Is it ethical to tug at an audience’s heartstrings to get them to donate money? How about giving you money? Speakers need to consider the ethical obligation to consider the impact of the story. Stories tap into emotions and create lasting memories. Stories told with the wrong motives can be manipulative.

The Formula for a Good Story

Tension-Release

So now you see the clear advantage in telling a story, let’s talk about the formula for a good story. A good story should help the audience see the events in their mind’s eye. Your story should play out like a movie in their head. This movie happens because you help them see the setting, characters, and details. To be fully engaged, the audience must feel some sort of tension.

The formula is tension and release.

The best stories create tension or conflict and then in some way resolve conflict. In persuasion, a story can create tension that can be released only by acting on the persuasion. Haven (2007) defines a story as “A character-based narration of a character’s struggles to overcome obstacles and reach an important goal.” Notice the focus on struggle and overcoming the struggle. Once you decide on the story that you want to tell, work on helping the audience feel the tension and release.

If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. If I got any comfort as I set out on my first story, it was that in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He’s a jerk at the beginning and nice at the end, or a coward at the beginning and brave at the end. If the character doesn’t change, the story hasn’t happened yet. And if story is derived from real life, if story is just condensed version of life then life itself may be designed to change us so that we evolve from one kind of person to another.
Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life (1994).

Dale Carnegie’s (2017) formula for storytelling includes three parts: Incident, action, and benefit. In the incident phase, the storyteller shares a vivid personal experience relevant to the point. Next, they give the action phrase, and they share the specific action that was taken. Finally, the speaker tells the benefit of taking the action. It still fits the tension-release formula, it just expands it to make sure that the speaker clearly lets the audience know what conclusion they are supposed to draw.

Good stories represent a change

One part of the tension-release model is how the character changes. Matthew Dick, Moth storytelling champion suggests that stories, where no change took place in the storyteller, are just anecdotes, romps, drinking stories, or vacation stories, but they leave no real lasting impression.

The story of how you’re an amazing person who did an amazing thing and ended up in an amazing place is not a story, it is a recipe for a douchebag. The story of how you are a pathetic person who did a pathetic thing and remained pathetic, is also not a story, it is a recipe for a sadsack. You should represent a change in behavior, a change in heart, a change in attitude. It can be a small change or a very large change. A story cannot simply be a series of remarkable events. You must start out as one version of yourself and end as something new. The change can be infinitesimal. It need not reflect an improvement in yourself or your character, but change must happen.
Matthew Dick.

I once was this, but now I am this

I once thought this, but now I think this

I once felt this, but now I feel this.

I once was hopeful, but now I am not

I once was lost, but now I am found

I once was happy, but now I am sad

I once was sad, but now I am happy

I once was uncertain, but now I know

I once was angry, but now I am grateful

I once was afraid, but now I am fearless

I once doubted, but now I believe

Stories Often Follow Common Plots

According to Heath and Heath (2008) of Made to Stick, there are common story plots. Each of these can be used in most speech types and can be adapted to the tension-release model.

Challenge Plot

• Underdog story
• Rags-to-riches story
• Willpower over adversity

Challenge plots work because they inspire us to act.

• To take on challenges
• To work harder

Connection Plot

• Focusing on relationships
• Making and developing friendships
• Discovering and growing in love

Connection plots work because they inspire us in social ways.

• To love others
• To help others
• To be more tolerant of others

Creativity Plot

• Making a mental breakthrough
• Solving a longstanding puzzle
• Attacking a problem in an innovative way

Creativity plots work because they inspire us to do something differently.

• To be creative
• To experiment
• To try something new

Elements to a Good Story

For the audience to experience the tension and release, they must be invested in the story. Good stories help the audience see the setting, know the characters, and feel the action.

1. Setting

Think of the setting as a basket to hold your story. If you start with the basket, the audience has a place to hold all the other details you give them. For this reason, many storytellers begin by describing the setting.

2. Characters

When you describe how the characters look or how they felt, we can see them as if we are watching them in a movie. The trick is to tell enough details we can create a mental picture of the character without giving so much information that we get bogged down.

3. Action

When you describe the action that is taking place, the audience begins to feel the action. If you describe something sad that happened, the audience will feel the sadness. If you describe something exciting that happened to you or a character, the audience will feel that excitement.

Pixar creator, Andrew Stanton, emphasizes that storytelling is joke telling, involving knowing the punchline or ending that leads to a singular goal, confirming truths about humanity.  Stanton underscores the power of a good story in engaging the audience and sets the stage for an intriguing journey. He describes storytelling as a well-told promise that propels the audience forward, using the absence of information to draw them in. Stanton emphasizes the importance of creating anticipation in storytelling, stating that drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty (TED, 2012).

Watch The Clues to a great story (19 mins) on Youtube

Attribution & References

Except where otherwise noted, this chapter is adapted from “The Power of Story: The Secret Ingredient to Making Any Speech Memorable” In Advanced Public Speaking by Lynn Meade, licensed under CC BY 4.0. / Replaced/refreshed outdated video content, moved “stories help people”, deleted: example from corporate trainer, keep a story log/notetaking challenge, theory application.

References

Alda, A. (2017). If I understood you, would I have this look on my face? Random House.

Braddock, K.,  Dillard, J. P. (25 February 2016). Meta-analytic evidence for the persuasive effect of narratives on beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. Communication Monographs, 83 (4), 446–467. doi:10.1080/03637751.2015.1128555. S2CID 146978687.

Carnegie, D. (2017). The art of storytelling. Dale Carnegie & Associates ebook.

Dahlstrom, M,F. (2014). Using narratives and storytelling to communicate science with nonexpert audiences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(4), 13614–13620. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1320645111

Denning, S. (2005). The leader’s guide to storytelling: Mastering the art and discipline of business narrative. John Wiley and Son.

Dicks, M. (2018). Storyworthy: Engage, teach, persuade, and change your life through the power of storytelling. New World.

Duarte, N. (n.d.) Fifteen Science-Based Public Speaking Tips to be a Master Speaker, The Science of People. https://www.scienceofpeople.com/public-speaking-tips/.

Fisher, W.R. (2009). Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument. Communication Monographs, 51 (1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758409390180

Fisher, W.R. (1985). The Narrative Paradigm: In the Beginning, Journal of Communication, 35(4), 74-89.  https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1985.tb02974.x

Gallo, C. (2016). I’ve analyzed 500 TED Talks, and this is the one rule you should follow when you give a presentation. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/ted-talk-rules-for-presentations-2016-3

Gershon, N, & Page, W. (2001). What storytelling can do for information visualization. Communication of the ACM, 44, 31–37. https://doi.org/10.1145/381641.381653

Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of personality and social psychology, 79(5), 701–721. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.79.5.701

Green, S. J., Grorud-Colvert, K. & Mannix, H. (2018). Uniting science and stories: Perspectives on the value of storytelling for communicating science. Facets, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2016-0079

Hasson,  U., Ghazanfar, A.A., Galantucci, B.,  Garrod S, & Keysers C. (2012). Brain-to-brain coupling: a mechanism for creating and sharing a social world. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(2), 114–121.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2011.12.007

Haven, K. (2007). Story proof: The science behind the startling power of story. Kendall Haven.

Heath, C & Heath, D. (2008). Made to Stick.  Random House.

Kromka, S. M.  & Goodby, A. K.  (2019) Classroom storytelling: Using instructor narratives to increase student recall, affect, and attention, Communication Education, 68:1, 20-43. DOI: 10.1080/03634523.2018.1529330

Lacey, S., Stilla, R., & Sathian, K. (2012). Metaphorically feeling: comprehending textural metaphors activates somatosensory cortex. Brain and language, 120(3), 416–421. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2011.12.016

Miller, D. (1994). A million miles in a thousand years: How I learned to live a better story. Thomas Nelson.

Schrobsdorff, S. (2021, Oct 6). The Storytelling Genius of Jane Goodall and Why Intellectual Arguments Don’t Change Behavior. Time. https://time.com/6104703/the-storytelling-genius-of-jane-goodall-and-why-intellectual-arguments-dont-change-behavior/

Seneca Libraries. (2014, May 7). Storytelling. Youtube. [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_eu_DoW1lw

Simmons, A. (2001). The story factor: Inspiration, influence, and persuasion through the art of storytelling. Basic Books.

Spencer, G. (1995). How to argue and win every time. St. Martin.

Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why Don’t Students Like School?: A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. Jossey-Bass.

Zac, P.J. (2014). Why your brain loves good storytelling. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2014/10/why-your-brain-loves-good-storytellinghbr.org/2014/10/why-your-brain-loves-good-storytelling