Stories, anecdotes: these are the grist of persuasive speeches.
A good story can illustrate and
demonstrate in a way that just other forms of evidence can't.
Stories are easy to grasp, they're memorable,
but we're not just peppering stories throughout our speech;
we want them to do stuff for us.
They can provide a break from the seriousness of a speech,
so a funny story.
But in terms of our argument,
stories can illustrate and demonstrate;
they can show and prove.
If we look back over the stock issues,
we can use stories in each one to illustrate.
Let me give you an illustration, chortle.
Anyways, years ago I was assisting on a speech
about the dangers of unlicensed daycare centers.
So these would be daycare centers that sort of ran under the radar,
so someone would just decide to take on
a few kids and they would start a daycare in their living room.
Obviously if they do that,
they don't undergo the same level of safety and
governmental review as an officially licensed daycare center.
Now in talking about this,
we had a terrible story;
it was a true story, but it was a terrible story.
So what was the story?
There was an unlicensed daycare center,
and the worker there had taken on too many kids.
The daycare worker had to leave a baby that she was feeding in the kitchen;
she had to go into the living room and break up a fight.
When the baby was alone, it slipped in its high chair,
and it got its neck stuck and it strangled to death.
It was an awful story,
but it hammered home the ill.
This can be a serious issue.
Somebody comes into that speech and are like,
"oh, this sounds boring."
That story said, this is a serious issue.
Now just telling that story isn't enough.
We needed to show that the risk was justified.
So we had to balance that qualitative ill with some quantitative ills,
showing statistics and testimonies that
demonstrated that the dangers of unlicensed daycares were pretty widespread.
But honestly, the story was the speech.
The issue was bigger and more complex,
but that story provided a snapshot of the worst-case scenario.
It was a clear illustration of the larger problem.
Now stories can also demonstrate, they can prove.
A story in your cure? You bet you should have the story in your cure.
If you're doing any type of fund-raising,
you probably want to show that your organization is competent.
A story allows you to showcase your effectiveness.
A while back I was talking to some nonprofit workers about this,
and one of these nonprofit workers said that any
time she talked about her African nonprofit organization,
she included lots of stories to show that
her organization had a history there and had connections there.
So giving money to her organization was
a sound strategy because they could show that they had networks in place.
It wasn't like giving money to a new organization that might not work out as well.
The stories here were proof,
they were demonstrating her organization was on point.
They had a track record of success in this region.
So if you're using a story to prove a point,
you should plan on including some evidence to show that this story isn't an outlier.
It should be illustrative but not anomalous.
If you want to persuade,
you want to use stories.