We all know that real stories make your presentation shine. But, can you tell an effective story in less than 30 seconds?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Imagine you’re giving a presentation, speech or recording a podcast.<\/p>\n

You have a lot of content to cover. You want to use a story to illustrate a point. You feel like you just don’t have the time to do it.<\/p>\n

Stories are great, but we don’t all have enough time to drop three minutes from our presentation to add one in.<\/p>\n

That’s where micro-stories come in. Micro-stories are complete stories that take only 30 seconds to one minute. They are hugely effective and they don’t steal too much time from the rest of your presentation.<\/p>\n

The master of micro-stories is Seth Godin.<\/p>\n

Seth Godin: The Master of Micro-Stories<\/h2>\n

Seth Godin is a world class presenter and storyteller. He uses a huge number of specific, real-life stories to illustrate his lessons about marketing in the post-advertising age.<\/p>\n

A while back, I took “<\/a>Seth Godin’s Freelancer Course<\/a>“. In it, he fit hundreds of real-life stories into just 2.5 hours of teaching. Each story is fully formed and demonstrates his point with astounding clarity and colour. Not only that, the stories are fun, surprising, emotional and, most importantly, they stick with you long after the presentation is over. This is exactly what you want for your own presentation stories.<\/p>\n

Seth shows us that you don’t have to spend lots of time to tell a good story.<\/p>\n

I’m going to show you how he fit a full story into just 22 seconds, and you can do it too.<\/p>\n

What Are Micro-Stories?<\/h2>\n

First things first, what is a micro-story?<\/p>\n

“Micro-story” is a term that I have come up with \u2014 at least, with regards to presentations \u2014 so it’s worth taking a moment to define them.<\/p>\n

I borrowed the concept from “microfiction”, which is a story of only a few hundred words. When we are talking about presentations, however, we don’t think in terms of words but in terms of time.<\/p>\n

I define a micro-story as any complete story which lasts under a minute.<\/p>\n

When a story gets longer than a minute, the audience start to notice that it is a story. The best presenters can “sneak” stories into their presentations so that you don’t even notice they are there.<\/p>\n

Micro-stories are effective because they illustrate a point clearly and succinctly.<\/p>\n

The Model: Three Key Turning Points (The Pincer Movement)<\/h3>\n

You can only really understand a story if you can fix down its key turning points. This is the approach which screenwriters have been using for decades, and it works very well.<\/p>\n

When you are the audience, you only want to “feel” the story on an emotional level. When you are a writer, however, you need to understand the nuts and bolts of how the story works. For this, you need to analyse it so you can write effective micro-stories yourself.<\/p>\n

I often use an model called the Five Key Turning Points to analyse stories, which is a model <\/a>proposed by Hollywood story expert Michael Hauge<\/a>. It works very well for longer stories, but for micro-stories I use a simplified version.<\/p>\n

I call my simplified approach “The Pincer Movement” and I’ve developed my own system for reliably constructing stories using this method.\u00a0 In summary, The Pincer Movement tackles only three key turning points:<\/p>\n

\n
• The Inciting Incident<\/strong> \u2014 The incident which drags the protagonist from their old life into the story. This occurs at 10% into the story.<\/li>\n
• The Point of No Return<\/strong> \u2014 The moment in the story which makes it impossible for the protagonist to go back to their old life and inevitable that they will reach the end. This occurs at 50% into the story.<\/li>\n
• The Climax<\/strong> \u2014 Everything that the whole story has been leading up to. The protagonist is victorious, or not. This happens at about 90% to 99% into the story.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  Each of these moments describes a specific moment in the story. Between each moment, there is usually some “development”. With micro-stories, this all happens very quickly.<\/p>\n

  I call it The Pincer Movement because, when I’m writing the story, I attack the two ends of the story first (The Inciting Incident and The Climax) before I nail down the middle (The Point of No Return). So, my writing process is a bit like a scorpion grabbing its prey with both pincers and stinging in the middle.<\/p>\n

  Micro-Stories vs Unfinished Anecdotes<\/h3>\n

  Before we get onto Seth’s 22 second story, it’s worth making a distinction.<\/p>\n

  Sometimes a presenter will seem to be using a micro-story, but in fact they are just telling an “unfinished anecdote”. This is a story which does not have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Usually, they are missing the end of the story.<\/p>\n

  Sometimes unfinished anecdotes are useful, but you need to know how to use them properly. If all of your stories are unfinished anecdotes it suggests lazy writing.<\/p>\n

  Seth Godin’s TED Talk \u2014The Power of Being Remarkable<\/h2>\n

  At the time of writing, Seth Godin’s TED talk on “How to get your ideas to spread<\/a>” has now been watched by over 5 million people. If you haven’t watched it before \u2014 and you have 17 minutes to spare \u2014 I highly recommend watching the whole presentation.<\/p>\n

  Seth’s talk is about being remarkable. Using real-world examples, he demonstrates how the old business model of advertising no longer works. The only way to succeed in business is to be remarkable.<\/p>\n

  He uses several micro-stories throughout the talk. The one I want to focus on is the story of Lionel Poil\u00e2ne, a French Baker. It comes up on the video at 8 mins 53 seconds. This story is a perfect example of the power of the micro-story.<\/p>\n

  Here is the video, starting at the story:<\/p>\n