| Framing Your Humorous Story |
|
For the past month, we have experimented with 2 sessions specific to the CHIC Toastmasters Club. These are: Making Fun of Myself, (Self-Deprecating Humour) and Humour Around Me. The objective is to use two types of humour effectively in two minutes, as a practice to integrate it to a longer speech. After one month, it is clear that a critical element that can be learned in these two minutes is how to frame a piece of humorous story around a point. This revelation coincides with what I learned from Ed Tate at the Shanghai Conference in May 2010. In his session, he mentioned the framework of story telling: People, Please, Action and Resolution (the lesson or message). I wrote a small piece about this earlier. Delivering a humorous story can be much more effective if this is followed. And the most important element is the ‘Resolution’: What did you learn from the story. The championship speakers have always repeated a mantra about the secret of making messages memorable in a speech: “Tell a story, make a point. Tell a story make a point.” And it is no different with a humorous story. The point doesn’t have to deeply philosophical, or fully inspiring, or specifically poignant. It can also be humorous, light, and entertaining. For the purpose of the two CHIC roles, it is important that the speaker identify the point of the story, and frame it accordingly, within a simple introduction and conclusion. Jennifer Zhou told a story was about watching a movie with her date in a theatre. She waited, and waited and waited for him to hold her hand. Then she heard a slap. There was a red mark on her date’s face: Instead of holding Jen’s hand on his left, he reached towards the right and held the hand of a 50 year old woman. I suggested that the story could be framed with this introduction: When we are young, we often eagerly anticipate eagerly for one thing, but end up with something unexpected. The key is to learn from the unexpected…..(then her story….) As you can see, my date had hoped for romantic handholding with me, but ended up with a slap on his face. In the end, he did learn to distinguish between his left and right. See how that simple point gave the story more cohesiveness? Jonah Wang told a story was about putting his breakfast in his jacket pocket, and then in the process of being squeezed to bits in the subway train, his jacket was caught in the door. And he never got to eat his breakfast. I suggested that this story be opened with a question: “How would you feel if you missed your breakfast? It is the most important meal of the day. Let me tell you about….(then his story) In the end, I missed my breakfast, and had a terrible day. Next time, please, eat your breakfast before you leave your home. These are simple messages that clearly structured the humorous story into a proper two minute speech. And that would be the same structure to use in a long piece of speech. Remember, a humorous story can teach you many things. You can frame it in different lessons. Just be creative about it. Give it a try! Hubert Lin
|