I’ve Seen the Light

I have been transformed.

I’ve always considered myself a decent storyteller. I was a writer long before I became a speaker, so I know how to structure a story and use foreshadowing, twists and contradictions to keep the audience’s attention.

This past year, however, at the hands of Darren LaCroix, Craig Valentine, Ed Tate, Mark Brown and Patricia Fripp at the World Champion’s Edge, I have come to understand the importance of using dialogue and character to go beyond telling a story and actually recreate the event for the audience to experience firsthand.

I have come to understand it, but I have done so grudgingly. I have been dropping more lines of dialogue into my stories, but it has always seemed so much more efficient to primarily tell the story. Dialogue and character seemed best as a seasoning to be sprinkled on top of the narrative.

But this weekend, I gave a speech about a hair-raising flight out of Mexico in a small plane. The first half of the speech went very well. I had a number of funny lines and I got a good response from the audience. The second half of the speech, about the actual flight, I told almost entirely in dialogue and character and my audience absolutely exploded.

In my seven years as a speaker and well over a hundred speeches, I have never felt such an immediate and visceral reaction from an audience. It was almost intimidating in its primal energy.

It was also intoxicating, as if my jalopy of a speech had suddenly become a Ferrari, and all that raw, throbbing power was right at my fingertips, just waiting to be unleashed.

For the first time, I see the potential to turbocharge not only humor, but emotion, persuasion and passion of all kinds.

Finally, I have seen the light.