In the ‘80s and early ‘90s, when computers first began to spread through our lives and workplaces, there were some who toyed with the idea of participatory entertainment. The idea was that we would play an active role in selecting the course of the movie, TV program or novel we were enjoying. The choices we made would influence how the drama turned out by steering us toward alternate endings or even completely different plots.
Read any good participatory novels recently? I didn’t think so. It turns out that audiences didn’t want to participate in controlling the plot. They wanted to put themselves in the hands of a skilled dramatist who would structure the experience for them. They wanted to strap into a good story the way they would a monster roller coaster and just hang on for dear life.
Audiences bring that same mindset to your speech or presentation. They want you to lay out your case for their consideration, so they can sit back and see where it takes them. Anything you do that requires participation from your audience strips away some of that experience. That’s not to say that you should never require your audience to do anything, only that you better have a damn good reason for doing it, as well as a firm idea of how they are going to respond.
Oh, and those participatory story experiments? They are called video games now.
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