World Champion Evaluator evaluating like a champion

The following is a fantastic article by Craig Valentine on making your stories visual:

Legendary speech coach, Patricia Fripp, once told me that audiences will not remember what you say as much as they will remember what they see in their minds when you say it. Fripp is absolutely correct and below are seven tools you can use to make your stories more visual for your audience.

1. Put your audience members somewhere inside of the scenes you create. For example, I say, “I wish you were in the passenger’s seat as I drove up to the KFC.” In other words, I put you in the passenger’s seat inside of my scene.
2. Check the VAKS (Visuals, Auditory, Kinesthetic, and Smell). For example, I might say, “If you had been sitting beside my wife and me on our old beat up black leather sofa (visual and kinesthetic), with the chocolate chip cookies baking in the background (smell), you would have heard my wife say (auditory). Do this quickly as you set your scene so that all the different types of learners will be brought into it.
3. Set your scene and remember where you mentally put everybody and everything on the stage. Do not be like the one guy we had in a bootcamp who buried his uncle on one part of the stage and then proceeded to have lunch on that very same spot during the same story.
4. Create and walk your timeline. You should turn the stage into a timeline that the audience reads from left to right. That means, if the story is chronological, the first events take place on the your right side of the stage (the left side from your audience’s point of view) and then you can walk to your left as you relate the later events of that story. Remember you must be the aerobics instructor and do everything in the opposite direction so it is the correct direction for your audience.
5. Give your characters a hint for how they look. For example, I might say, “This big burly guy in the front row yelled out to me.” Doing a visual gesture here to show is size also helps.
6. Attach a visual to all of your verbal foundational phrases. For example, when I say, “Don’t get ready, stay ready,” I have a gesture I use with my arms at the same time I give the phrase. When I do this a few times during my speech, the visual begins to have the ability to stand on its own. When I give my 4 Rs to Remarkable Results speeches, I can give the four gestures (one for each point) without speaking and my audience will know exactly what I am saying.
7. I have saved the best for last. Here it is. Show the visual before the verbal. This means, don’t just give the lines of dialog. Instead, give the lines and then show the visual reaction of the other character before that character gives the verbal response. For example, one character might say, “Craig, I admire you for having a dream but you can’t leave the organization.” At that point my other character (who happens to be me) shows the visual of confusion on my face before giving the verbal response of, “What do you mean I can’t leave?”

Too many speakers are simply delivering lines of dialog back and forth without showing the reactions. As the 2001 Toastmasters World Champion of Public Speaking, Darren LaCroix, says, “Reactions tell the story.” Show the visual reaction before you give the verbal response.

Final Thoughts:

When you use these seven tools in your stories, not only will your speeches be more visual, but you as a speaker will become more visible. This is because great storytellers that have profound and practical points are always in high-demand.