Every idea worth spreading must be packaged in a story worth telling.

So, it is no surprise that the question I most frequently get from TED speakers that I coach and from the people that have read my book “How To Deliver A TED Talk” is ‘Which story should I tell?’

At any given time, people are either suffering from story-block or from story-overload.  Those who are blocked feel their lives are ordinary and that they have not had dramatic experiences.  On deeper reflection, you will realize that is nonsense.  You and I and everyone around us experiences at least one epiphany per day in our amazing lives.  When you tune in to your emotions moment by moment, you will see hundreds of stories dancing all around you.  That degree of sensitivity leads you to story-overload.  You know you have contracted that condition when your try to squeeze a lifetime of insights into an 18 minute TED talk.

The panacea for both conditions is to find one story with one central theme that is deeply personal.  Here are three storytelling prompts that offer an instant cure:

Prompt 1: One Lesson

If you could go back in time and give yourself one lesson, what would it be?  A safe, but still impactful, approach is to give this lesson to your professional self.  You probably have a bunch of lessons but will need to pick just one.  Here is one of mine.  At the beginning of my professional life, I believed that the sign of true success was to be so amazing at my job that my manager would leave me alone.  For an entire decade I lived in this state of ignorance until a great manager opened my eyes to the power of seeking and accepting continuous feedback.  Ever since then, I have wished I had a time machine to give my younger self a swift kick in the head.

However, the more powerful approach is sharing a lesson with your younger personal self.  Some people I mention this to come up with a warning that would have prevented a single catastrophic event.  I do not recommend that sort of lesson for a few reasons.  Though you will connect with your audience by showing vulnerability, you will just leave your audience feeling bad for what happened to you.  They will not be able to help you and they will not be able to relate your warning to their own lives – which is the of this whole thing anyway.  Instead, focus on an eternal truth.  Mine is “the journey is the reward.”  Though that is not a novel concept, the magic is in sharing the story of how I felt before I embraced it, the experience of the exact moment I grasped its meaning, and the explanation of what my life has been like after my discovery.

Prompt 2: Defining Moment

What was THE defining moment that most dramatically changed the course of your life?  Though this could be a moment of great triumph or joy, the most powerful stories come from loss, pain, terror, or failure.  Again, you can play it safe with professional stories or you can go deep with personal ones.  If you are giving a humorous speech, then you can choose your most embarrassing moment for your defining moment.

If you go dark and personal, remember that you need to provide relief by bringing your audience back toward light and hope.   At the 2012 Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking, one of the speakers shared an unrelentingly terrifying story of domestic violence.   The story deeply affected everyone in the room and it clearly continues to weigh on my mind.  Just as with many TED talks, the objective of that competition was to share an inspiring story.  More importantly, the audience was expecting to be motivated by every speech.  Though the speaker had a story that needed to be told, a story with no happy ending, she should have chosen a different venue to tell it.

To make a good story great, frame the defining moment as a moment of choice.  Choices between good and evil are too easy and too obvious.  Instead, present choices between two goods, or better, between two evils.  To add even more suspense, share how you ignored the choice for a while as your situation got even more complicated.

Prompt 3: Overcoming Weakness

What early weakness led you to find your passion? Many people develop their greatest strength fueled by the anxiety of hiding or compensating for an early perceived weakness.  Most great speakers started out terrified of public speaking.  Many great achievers rallied after being told by an authority figure that they would never amount to anything.  I did not read my first book cover to cover until I was 15 years old and evolved into a voracious reader and writer.   (A belated thank you to Clifton Keith Hillegass, the founder of CliffsNotes, for getting me through middle school.)

Try It Out!

Use one of these three storytelling prompt, the one that resonates most deeply with you, to find your story worth spreading.  No matter which you choose, I strongly encourage you to add a mentor into your story that gives you, a normal mortal otherwise equal to your audience, the special recipe to be extraordinary.

In the first episode of the 1988 PBS series “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers”, Campbell outlines the three types of heroes that you should work into your stories.  Joseph Campbell is the father of modern storytelling having taught and studied the subject for at least 60 years.  In Malcolm Gladwell’s lingo, that makes him an ‘Outlier’ six times over.

Before I outline the three, I would like to share a paraphrased version of Campbell’s definition of a hero: ‘A Hero is someone who has achieved or experienced something beyond the range of the ordinary, often through self-sacrifice, that is bigger than themselves.’

Type I:  The Intentional Hero

The intentional hero is type you most likely imagine when you think of story.  This hero sets off on a quest to achieve a specific goal.  In the process of attaining the goal, the hero often undergoes a psychological or spiritual transformation that is far more significant than their physical experience.

Type II: The Reluctant Hero (or Forced Hero)

The reluctant hero is forced against his will into a journey.  The example that Campbell uses is a soldier drafted into a war.  A milder example, repeated frequently in modern cinema, is a child forced into a cross-country road trip with her parents.

Type III:  The Accidental Hero (or Serendipitous Hero)

The accidental hero is the middle ground between the intentional hero and the reluctant hero.  Using her own free will, the accidental hero falls into an unexpected journey.  In ancient stories, this was represented by a person following a magical animal into the forest.  The movie “The Hangover” represents a more modern, comical version of this archetype with characters who start out seeking fun but quickly themselves in a far more dramatic adventure.

Try It Out!

To engage your audience, you must tell stories that are vivid, emotional, and personal.  Most stories have three acts which Campbell describes as Departure, Fulfillment, and Return.  Departure (Act I) takes the main character from their ordinary life through an ignored call-to-adventure and into an inciting incident.  The inciting incident leave the hero with no choice but to pursue their quest.   Fulfillment (Act II) takes the main character from the inciting incident to the climax.  Along the way, the hero has a series of paired trials and revelations that escalate in intensity.  During the Return (Act III), the hero shares what she has learned with her disciples and settles into a new, often better, life.

Tell a story in your next speech.  Better yet, start with story.  Just remember to include a mentor that gives your hero the physical or psychological magic they need to succeed.  Every Luke Skywalker needs an Obi-Wan Kenobi and a Yoda.

Of the countless ways to begin your speech, I am going to detail the three types of openings that the most compelling TED speakers use to engage their audiences.  Remember that the first ten or twenty seconds of your speech is the peak of your audience’s engagement level.  It is not going to get any better as one by one your listeners will get distracted by their mental grocery lists or the next day’s outfit.  Hook them fast with benefits by giving them an implicit or explicit reason to pay close attention.

Opening #1: The Personal Story

The most consistently successful opening is the personal story.  Here is what you need to know.  First, your personal story should really be personal.  Tell your own story and share your observations.  It is a good idea to make others the heroes in your stories.  Second, make sure your story is directly relevant to your core message.  If your goal is to inspire people to volunteer their time to feed the homeless, a cute story about how your dog can bark ‘I love you’ just does not belong.  Third, fourth, and fifth, make your story highly emotional, highly sensory, and rich in dialogue.  The story should be so specific that your audience is able to relive it with you. And sixth, start your story somewhere in the middle so that you immediate prompt your audience to wonder who, what, where, whey, why, or how.

In his TEDTalk, author and success expert Richard St. John demonstrated the power of using a personal story for his opening:

This is really a two hour presentation I give to high school students, cut down to three minutes. And it all started one day on a plane, on my way to TED, seven years ago. And in the seat next to me was a high school student, a teenager, and she came from a really poor family. And she wanted to make something of her life, and she asked me a simple little question. She said, “What leads to success?” And I felt really badly, because I couldn’t give her a good answer. So I get off the plane, and I come to TED. And I think, jeez, I’m in the middle of a room of successful people! So why don’t I ask them what helped them succeed, and pass it on to kids?

Did you visualize yourself on the plane?  Did you turn your head and eavesdrop when the teenage girl, who came from a poor family, asked Richard for the secret of success?  Could you feel Richard’s disappointment about not having a good answer and his zeal to be ready to help kids in the future?  Moreover, and more selfishly, are you now intensely curious what Richard St. John found to be the key to success?  To find out, you will have to watch his talk on TED.com; I cannot spoil all the fun.  But, at least you now know Richard’s secret to capturing his audience with a personal story opening.

Opening #2: The Powerful Question

If you go the powerful question route, I recommend that you use “why” questions and “how” questions.  “Why” questions are by far the most enticing since they tap into our natural curiosity to understand the world around us.  Once we know why things happen, then we want to know how to make good things happen and how to prevent bad things from happening.  If the “why” is implied or well understood, then you can open with a “how” question.

Simon Sinek demonstrated the most effective powerful question opening of any TEDTalk that I have encountered.  Here is how he began a talk that ultimately provided people with a how-to framework for being an inspiring leader or an effective corporation:

How do you explain when things don’t go as we assume? Or better, how do you explain when others are able to achieve things that seem to defy all of the assumptions? For example: Why is Apple so innovative? Year after year, after year, after year, they’re more innovative than all their competition. And yet, they’re just a computer company. They’re just like everyone else. They have the same access to the same talent, the same agencies, the same consultants, the same media. Then why is it that they seem to have something different? Why is it that Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights Movement? He wasn’t the only man who suffered in a pre-civil rights America. And he certainly wasn’t the only great orator of the day. Why him? And why is it that the Wright brothers were able to figure out control-powered, manned flight when there were certainly other teams who were better qualified, better funded, and they didn’t achieve powered man flight, and the Wright brothers beat them to it. There’s something else at play here.

A single opening question is sufficient.  But, Mr. Sinek instead chose to bombard his audience with a string of “why” questions.  This approach, an extended “why-tease”, is extremely effective but most be done carefully.  To successfully string multiple questions together in an opening, they must all have the same answer.  Simon even mixed how and why questions together, a bit like playing with matches and dynamite; however, both types of questions were rooted in the same underlying reason.  I would just leave you confused if I opened a speech with “Why is it that the sky is blue?  And why is it that that a rolling stone gathers no moss? And why is it that elephants are afraid of mice?”

Opening #3: The Shocking Statement

Though shocking statements most frequently rely on statistics, they can also express strong opinions that challenge conventional wisdom.  The important thing is that your point must trigger a range of audience emotions.  If you share a “what”, then people will have a burning need to fill in the gaps on why, how, when, and where.  In his TED2010 talk, celebrity chef and child nutrition advocate Jamie Oliver used exactly this recipe in his opening.  Listen to how he started:

Sadly, in the next eighteen minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive will be dead from the food that they eat.  My name is Jamie Oliver.  I am thirty four years old.  I am from Essex in England and for the last seven years I have worked fairly tirelessly to save lives in my own way.  I am not a doctor; I’m a chef. I don’t have expensive equipment, or medicine.  I use information and education. I profoundly believe that the power of food has a primal place in our homes that binds us to the best bits of life.

Chef Oliver captured his audience by sharing what is happening – people are dropping like flies from the food they eat.  And, they are not half way around the world in a developing country; they are in the same modern nation as his audience.  You should have little doubt that most of the audience is wondering if they will survive lunch!  Such is the power of a shocking statistic that is deeply and personally relevant to the audience.  Remember the magic four needs: physical health and safety; love and belonging; desire and self-interest; hope in a brighter future.  Jamie went primal, life and death, and had his audience waiting with bated breath to find out why this is happening and to learn how to stay alive.

Try It Out!

Your opening should have caused your audience to consider the benefits of your talk in an implicit way.  Rather than starting your speeches with a whimper such as “Hello ladies and gentlemen…” or “In the next 45 minutes, I am going to share with you…”, start your next talk with a bang.  You can do that by telling a personal story, asking a powerful question, or sharing a shocking statistic.  Just make sure that your opening completely supports the primary theme or objective of your speech.