Narrative
Printed Page 479
A narrative is a story. When you use a narrative in an informative speech, the story enables you to both share information and capture the audience’s attention. The story itself can take the form of a personal remembrance, a humorous anecdote, or a serious account of an event that happened in someone else’s life—all told in a way that informs the audience about your topic. Used skillfully, narratives can help “humanize” a speaker for listeners and thus enhance the speaker’s credibility, or ethos.
Using narrative in an informative speech is a good way to get your point across in an engaging, memorable way. For example, you could use narrative to do one of the following:
- Open a speech on the drama and dangers of competitive sports, specifically those with little or no equipment to protect the body. A poignant introductory story about Kevin Ware, the Louisville shooting guard who severely broke his leg during the 2013 NCAA tournament, could help win your listeners’ attention and stir up their emotions right from the start.
- Emphasize the importance of communication in sustaining intimate relationships. An entertaining narrative about a misunderstanding that you and your romantic partner ultimately cleared up through skillful communication could help you get your point across in a lighthearted but meaningful way.
- Help your listeners appreciate the need for careful preparation before a job interview. A story about how your friend failed to research the dress code of a company he was interviewing with and showed up in overly casual attire could leave a lasting impression on your listeners.
- Reveal the difficulty of getting a job after serving time in prison. A story about the hardships that released inmates face when trying to find jobs and rebuild their lives could raise audience awareness.
Using narrative effectively takes careful thought and preparation. You need to choose a story that supports your message, rather than just throwing in a narrative simply to entertain or captivate your audience.
Click the "Next" button to try Video Activity 16.2, “Conveying Information: Narrative (Needs Improvement).”
Thus, select stories—and the details that go into them—based on audience analysis. To illustrate, if you were giving a speech about the 2013 NCAA tournament to an audience composed of people who had little knowledge of college basketball, you might need to explain who Kevin Ware is and why he was so important to the Louisville team and fans. Even if you know the elements of the narrative well, you may want to research background information and specific details of the story and weave the information you find into the speech.
Finally, remember that telling a compelling story in a way that also informs and educates your audience is a bit of an art. You want to come across as casual and natural (rather than over-rehearsed) but also authoritative, which requires extensive preparation and practice. It’s as if you need to carefully practice acting unrehearsed. In truth, using narrative in a speech can be a risky call, but if you pull it off well, it offers you and your audience real rewards. (For more on narrative, see Chapter 8.)