Connect Using Humor and Story

Ramakrishna Reddy

Connect_Using_Humor__Cover_for_Kindle

 

What makes a great Story? A great Story is when an ordinary character overcomes seemingly impossible circumstances to achieve a goal. That’s it. If you can understand this sentence and digest each and every word and reflect it in your story creation process, you are already halfway into creating exciting content.

 
Now, what is Humor? In simple terms, Humor brings amusement and laughter to a speech so that the audience is entertained.

 
Then what is Persuasion? In the context of a speech, Persuasion is the speaker’s skill at influencing how the audience thinks, feels or acts as a result of hearing the speech.

 
Persuasion from Aristotle

 
Aristotle in his masterpiece Rhetoric wrote that Persuasion is the result of Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. To be concise, Ethos is credibility, Pathos is the emotional connect and Logos is the logic in your speech. The best way to use these three elements when speaking is through the use of a personal story. Why a personal story, and not just any story? When you speak, you need credibility (Ethos) and that’s what comes through in a personal story. If it is the story of your own life, you have the right to speak about it with authority. Logic (Logos) can be taken care by carefully crafting your speech content with the proper flow of ideas in a good order. The emotional connect (Pathos) is the main reason for using a story. Story is a powerhouse for Pathos because stories have the unique ability to transmit emotion. Emotion creates a great connection with the audience. And on top of it, if you add Humor, you will hit a home run.

 
I can tell that Humor and Story are the greatest tools for any speaker. Story has the power to transmit emotion and humor helps to deliver positive emotions. Hence, used together, humorous stories make for one of the best mediums to connect with an audience. A great story has a life of its own. With a great story, your words walk into the hearts of your listeners. When you add humor, your words will fly into the hearts of your listeners.

 
Perspectives of Humor

 
Dr. Charles Jarvis, a dentist, a humorist and Hall of Fame speaker defined Humor as “the mental faculty of discovering, expressing or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous”. Dr. Jarvis shares two definitions of humor with us. The first is “a painful thing told playfully”. The second is “tragedy separated by time and space”. Note that both definitions treat humor as a serious thought viewed in a light manner.

 

Ever heard someone say, “I laughed so hard I nearly cried”? This shows how close Humor is to pathos: an emotion of sympathetic pity.

 
The other theory, which is really cool, is the Benign Violation theory coined by Dr. Peter McGraw and Joel Warner. I heard this theory from a TED talk ‘What makes things funny’ by Dr. Peter McGraw. Although he is not a standup comedian, he has done a lot of research on humor. According to the duo, Humor gets created when there is a benign (harmless or safe) violation from what is acceptable. They illustrate this theory by using the old gag of someone slipping on a banana peel. Such an accident usually elicits a laugh. However, if the person was hurt badly in the fall, it won’t elicit a laugh because it has become harmful and the playful element has been lost.

 
Sophie Scott in her TED talk ’Why we laugh’ said, “When you are alone, you do not laugh often. It means the humor creation is beyond just the quality of the joke. You laugh because you say that you understand the speaker and you agree with the speaker”.

 

Humor creates a strong bond and is a vital element for connection. When an audience laughs, it means more than just being entertained, their laughter says they understand you, they like you.

 
Persuasive Story with Humor

 
Now that we understand perspectives of humor, let’s understand perspectives about story. There are many types of stories and as I mentioned earlier, it would be cool idea to focus on using a personal story for persuasion. On the contrary, you can persuade even without humor if you tell a moving story of someone dying in your arms, or how you climbed Mt. Everest, or fought with a tiger, etc., but if you, like me, don’t have such an emotional story, humor is your mantra.

 
In order to inject humor into your speech in an organic way, you need to learn the skills needed to craft a persuasive story. Did you notice that I used the word skill? That is because knowing how to craft a persuasive story is a skill. That’s the reason I am about to carefully lead you through a tested persuasive and humorous speech. Along the way, we will uncover its secrets and strategies and you will learn the nuts and bolts of how it was created so that you can create your own humorous and persuasive stories. You will also learn the secrets to editing and delivering your speech in ways which will keep your audience engaged and entertained.

 

Some people are so talented that humor just pours out of them. And then there are those like me! Many people think creating humor is hard, but actually it is not. Learning to be humorous is a skill you can master if you are willing to work at it. To begin, here is something that you can use. There are many variations to the following humor equation and they can all work because people laugh at different things for different reasons. The following, however, is a good one to follow for crafting laugh lines within a speech.

 
Premise + Pause + Punch Line + Pause = Laughter
Let us understand the elements with a laugh line.

 
“People exaggerate that parents in India pressure their children to only become a doctor or an engineer. That’s not true. They don’t just pressure. They blackmail.”

 
I have re-written the above laugh line to indicate the different elements of humor.

 
“People exaggerate that parents in India pressure their children to only become a doctor or an engineer. That’s not true. They don’t just pressure. They blackmail .”

 
Premise: The premise is the information needed for an audience to understand or appreciate the punch line. In our example, words highlighted in italics form the premise.

 

The Premise must:
• Be believable, even if not completely true. In our example, the premise is believable because the audience also could agree it is a cultural thing that Indian parents are pretty hard on their child’s ambition
• Lead the audience in one direction (in order to surprise them later). Note that I said, “That’s not true. They don’t just pressure”. This leads the audience to think that I am going to say something positive about Indian parents
• Not be funny
• Be easily understood
• Create anticipation in the minds of the audience
• Be relevant for the audience
• Be about a situation with which the audience can identify and empathize
Pause 1: Is needed to build tension. Pause 1 must:
• Heighten the curiosity
• Not be so long that the audience lose interest
• Be long enough to create tension. This is what is known as timing

 
Punch Line: It is a word or phrase that follows the pause that triggers laughter. Punch Line should create surprise by saying something contrary to the audience’s expectation. Here, the punch line is, “They blackmail”. The laughter is the result of the release of the tension built up during the pause.

 
Pause 2: This pause gives the audience time to laugh. Again, it’s the timing that is important in comedy and many speakers make the mistake of not pausing after they trigger the laugh. If you do not pause, you will be cutting the laughter short—don’t do this—enjoy it and let the audience enjoy it, too.

 
Also, during this pause for laughter, you can get the most out of it by using gestures or even a deadpan expression to maximize the effect. Try different gestures to see which one works best.

Connect Using Humor and Story Description:

Create Connection with your Audience without Hoping or Guessing.

Imagine how you would feel when people are cheering, applauding and saying ‘wow’ after your presentation.

What if a few secrets could help you give a speech where an audience member comes and says, “I felt you were just talking to me”.

Multiple Award winning speaker, Ramakrishna Reddy, presents the secrets, tools and devices that helped him create 18 laughs 3 applauses in a 7-minute persuasive speech in his 5th book ‘Connect with Humor and Story’. This is not theory. It’s absolute content based on his research, his experience and his testing.

In this book, you’ll learn:

How to convert a real world experience into a humorous story

How to synergize a story and speech structure by using SST technique

How to open a speech with a story in ‘the right’ way (many get it wrong all the time)

A proven thesis to maximize and virtually guarantee your success to create humor

Seven humor devices that you MUST know to leverage the humor creation process

The best-kept secret to create the persuasive effect in the audiences mind

How to craft a message that does not look preachy yet persuade your audience

What it takes to create applause during the course (not after) of the speech

Eleven Editing strategies that nobody teaches

Twelve Execution strategies that is rarely talked….

If you are a writer or a publisher who wants to be featured visit BGSAuthors - our dedicated site for authors and publishers.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This