Read Time: 4 Minutes

Ever walked away from a presentation thinking "I rambled too much" or "I lost them halfway through"?

The secret to great presentations isn't perfect delivery or well-designed slides.

It's something that I call "Sequential Storytelling."

A PhD student's 3-minute thesis about mosquitos—which garnered 5.6M views—shows us exactly how to do this. Her intro is a story, which segues to her next story, and her next... all the way until she concludes with her final story. It's the fastest 3 minute presentation delivered by a researcher that I've ever seen.

 

But here's what's most remarkable. Each story is no more than 3 sentences.

How? By following this simple CTC storytelling framework:

• Context Setting
• Tension Building
• Closing The Loop

In today's issue, I'll break down exactly how she presents so that people hang onto every word that you say. Then, I'll explain how you can do this without needing to script and over-prepare.

The Opening Story: Setting the Hook

Here's her complete opening:

Context Setting:

Context setting is all about setting the scene.

You mention the main character, detail or descriptions that matter. The big mistake people make is providing too many details that end up losing their audiences.

But the best "context setters" take it up one level. They pique curiosity.

In this case, Emily uses an extreme adjective ("deadliest") to make us ask ourselves this. "What is the deadliest animal?"

Build Tension:

Your audience now has a question. But how do you make your audience really want to get answers?

In its simplest form, you need to insert a burning question in their minds. The best way to do this is by introducing conflict.

There are many ways you can do this. A few ideas include:

• Asking more related, rhetorical questions
• Twisting the knife: make the problem or question that you teed up hurt your audience if it's not resolved. How? You can raise the stakes. Paint an ideal picture of what your audience would want. Or describe the worst-case scenario your audience would hate.
• Faking them out: make them think the solution is one thing but tee up something surprising

In this case, Emily fakes them out. She builds tension by acknowledging what the audience might be thinking ("drop-bears"). Inside of my private community, you'll find ​my storytelling cheatsheet​ that gives you more ways to build tension.

 

Payoff:

This is the easiest part. Most people introduce their points right away. But without teeing up the context or building tension, people won't care about your points.

She resolves the mystery by revealing mosquitoes as the true threat. Note how she could have teased another question here, but chose resolution since it's her opening. More on that later.

The Middle Story: Building Momentum

Take this story about her research method:

Context Setting (Describe The Past):

Here, she introduces the subject: testing mosquitoes for viruses. This gives us an understanding about past methods. But she does something subtle to pique curiosity.

She tees up another challenge by using the word "difficult."

Then, she introduces herself as the hero that solved this "difficult" problem.

Note how the word "so" is a great word to progress your story. The more you use the word "so" to connect your points, or "but" to introduce conflict, the more compelling your story will be.

 

Build Tension (Describe The Present):

She uses present tense to introduce her solution. On its face, the solution of painting cards with honey doesn't seem that significant. This is by design. She wants us to wonder why honey-painted cards will lead to the desired impact of her study.

Close The Loop (Describe The Future):

Here, she uses future tense to explain why the honey is crucial to her study. It detects viruses that the mosquitoes leave behind.

Notice how the progression of time gives momentum to the story. You can do this by saying words like "In the past...," "Now....," "Therefore....," and "Because of this....".

The Closing Story: Driving Impact

Her final story shows how the Tension Building step isn't always necessary when your context is vivid enough:

Context Setting: Paints a clear picture of the problem's scale in India. Notice how she uses vivid descriptions like "a quarter of the population lives on a dollar a day."

Close The Loop: Shows how her work matters for real people. This is the last line -- the key takeaway -- that you want your audience to remember.

The Key to Practice: Start Small

Emily's presentation was likely the result of a carefully worded script with dozens -- if not, hundreds -- of practice reps.

But the reality is that you don't need to script every word of your presentation. In fact, I would argue that it's better to build the muscle memory of telling great stories on the spot. That way, speaking in high-stakes scenarios becomes more natural.

How? You need reps. My favorite game to practice is The Narration Game.

Take any object that you see -- for example, this water bottle.

 

Then, practice telling 3-sentence stories. One sentence for context, one for tension, and one for the close.

For example:

Context: "In 2020, I bought this water bottle because I hated my water getting warm after 3 hours in the car."

Tension: "It kept my water cold for 8 hours, but to this day, the winning feature that I tell people about isn't the temperature cooling."

Close: "It's actually the purple handle on the top so that I don't need to carry it with more than one finger."

The more reps you get at this, the more natural and captivating of a speaker you'll become. But applying these storytelling skills at work can be quite the challenge.

How do you tee up a meeting? How do you get your executives to be more engaged while you're speaking? How do you articulate your opinions so that people value what you have to say?

The key to this is the 4 S's: Storytelling, Stating Intent, Simplifying Points, and Seeking Understanding. In my ​Impromptu Speakers Academy​, we master these four keys in our 3-week live bootcamp. Limited space is available.

 

Best,

Preston