How to write Presentations in five steps: my TRAIN Framework
When most people sit down and write presentations, their thought process is:
How do I get all of the information that’s inside my brain, and stuff it in the brain of my audience??
Not only is this a colossal waste of time, it’s also a colossal waste of opportunity.
Instead, I present to you TRAIN: a frame work that walks you through how to write presentations that don’t take you forever, engage your audience and actually drive them to action. I lay it out in this video…
Three steps to writing a story for the stage
My least favourite way to be introduced is, “This is Marsha, she’s a professional storyteller!”
I always jump in quickly with the correction, “—Storytelling Coach”. There’s a good reason for that.
As a storytelling coach (please pretend for a moment I’m not British or Canadian and don’t expect humility), I am excellent. Part of how I can say this with confidence is because I don’t totally know how I do it — my brain just constructs people’s stories for me in a way that works. The other reason I say this is from 13 years of doing it, and people telling me (or telling me how hard the audience cried when listening to their talk).
But actually being the storyteller? Not so much.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m fine. When it comes to actual keynotes or teaching-style talks, I’m great! But as a storyteller who is just telling a story on stage, I’m… average. Which is why I don’t do it very often.
BUT for reasons I can’t totally fathom, I have agreed…
Well that’s depressing
I’m on a zoom call, looking at the man with a big smile and blue glasses, feeling the familiar buzzing in the pit of my belly, when he says something and I’m like, “Wait, WHAT? Why aren’t we talking more about that?” I get that fizzy feeling in my stomach every time I’m on a call…
One of my greatest ever naps (and my most important Storytelling lesson)
“I can’t eat! If I eat, I vomit!”
Lucy, the old lady I’m sitting with, is upset.
I’m at the day centre for seniors with dementia, where I volunteer once a week. Lucy is my favourite. Six foot tall and rake thin, with short, scrappy hair and clothes that hang off her, she’s usually very sweet. A big smiler. And she loves to sing.
LOVES.
It’s clear that, in her younger days, she was some kind of professional. You can tell from the sharp, clear vibrato she randomly lets out at various points in the day.
Her memory is almost completely shot. She asks if her daughter is coming, and is placated when I tell her, “Later, Lucy”. Then she asks again in thirty seconds time.
Lunchtime is always stressful. And always the same…
Biggest opportunity of my life…and I was dreading it
G looks at me with something that is a cross between confusion and horror.
She says, “You HAVE to stop this!”
“No, I don’t, it’s fine. I’ll handle it,” I reply, trying to convince myself as much as I am her.
When I was 31 years old, Sony offered me my own record label.
A few months earlier, I’d heard about how a friend of mine, Imran, had an imprint (a sort of “sub-label”) on XL records. He’d put out the first UK single by this new band Vampire Weekend, which had blown up. One night, I’m out with my music lawyer friend Martin, and I’m feeling hard done by.
I whine, “Imran has a label. Why don’t I?”
Martin smiles and says, “Let’s get you one.”
A few weeks and several meetings later, Martin and Sony’s lawyers are getting the contracts ready for Huckster Records, an imprint of the Epic label (whose parent company is Sony). On Epic are artists like Abba, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, and now… whoever I decide to sign.
In the meantime, I am figuring out the logistics. It’s going to be a 7” vinyl records label and Epic are giving me an extremely generous budget: they’ll pay for the vinyl, radio promo, press promo, a *music video*, and a small live tour. And — because I don’t yet have either — they are also going to buy me a laptop and an iPod (this is before the days of smartphones). All I have to do is to take care of finding someone to print the actual vinyl and the record covers, then figure out distributing those to record shops.
Which, it turns out, is really hard. And really stressful. And not my skillset. And I don’t want to do any of it. Like, ANY of it.
But I don’t tell anyone that…
Genuinely the funniest moment of my life (up until that point)
I’m 13 years old, I’m on the couch at home, and I am HORIZONTAL with laughter. Laughing so hard I’m crying. Laughing so hard I can barely breathe.
On the screen, a man with glasses is leaping about, saying things like, “can you imagine the sheer joy of an empty bin in your kitchen, a new fresh bin liner in the swing top bin? It’d be like a bin in heaven, wouldn’t it?”
What i don’t know at that tender age is that, for the first time in my life, I’m watching observational stand-up comedy.
I love it more than I’ve loved almost anything else I’ve ever seen.
The routine was by Ben Elton on his show The Man From Auntie. It’s still on Youtube (and still holds up) on re-watch, I was once again crying laughing. His delivery! The physical stuff! The fact that he seamlessly brings the point back to politics at the end! How you can hear people SCREAMING in the audience!] And while, yes, I was being introduced to Ben Elton and to stand up in general, what I was more specifically being introduced to was one of my favourite concepts in comedy AND presentations, which is…
How to tell a good ghost story (3 essential components)
As Rico is talking, I think, Oh I am SO glad I said yes to him running through this with me first!! I’ve been doing my live storytelling show — True Stories Told Live Toronto — for 10 years. It’s currently on 4-5 times a year, but there’s one show in particular that I look…
I beat myself up about this for YEARS
Standing at the streetcar stop, David smiles down at me and I smile back. But the pit of my stomach is clenched. I know today is the day I have to say something. **in a rush? In a VERY RARE MOVE, I’m running an open-to-the-public storytelling workshop *THIS* Weds Sep 27th 12–2pm ET (with replay…
What some of the most annoying people in my life have taught me
As he starts talking, my heart sinks. I’d chosen him specifically because I thought he was different from the others. And yet… here he is, doing the same thing they all do.
I’ve been going to a boxing gym on and off for a few years, but I only started taking it seriously this spring. To be clear: I have zero interest in ever boxing anyone’s face. But after a life coach I’d worked with suggested that I find a way to express some, shall we say, negative emotions I was experiencing — in a way that wouldn’t damage any of my relationships — I got back into classes.
I’m now going two to three times a week, and I fugging LOVE it. I have a running joke that boxing classes are my new girlfriend. When I’m in them, my internal monologue is usually THIS IS THE BESSSSSSSSST I WANT TO BE HERE FOREVVVVVVVVERRRRRR (I mean, those times when it’s not “wait! Was it jab-cross-left hook-right uppercut? Or jab-cross-right uppercut-left hook?” — I have horrible short-term memory for the sequences). When I’m not in a class, I am counting the hours until the next one, or feeling excitement when I see it on my calendar. When I’m rolling my wraps back up after a class, I think, “Soon, you’ll be back on my hands, under my gloves!!!!” This week, I was out of town in a different city. Driving around, I saw the sign for a (different) boxing gym and my heart LEAPT, in the way that only reminders of a crush can inspire.
I love everything about the boxing classes. Except for the Bro’s At The Boxing Gym…
How to tell stories about other people
You have three options:
1) Get Their Permission
Where I can, I try and do this as a matter of course — and ALWAYS with former clients. Not least so that potential future clients don’t get spooked that I’ll share all their secrets! If the story subject matter something heavy, you could offer to send a draft to the person before you publish/perform it. But usually, a simple,
“Do you mind if I tell the story about [thing we experienced together] on Facebook/on my blog/in my talk?”
should do.
2) Change identifying details
As I’ve talked about before, one of my storytelling rules is “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.” By this, I don’t mean “lie to make yourself sound good,” but rather, “do whatever you need to do to make the listener feel the way you felt in that moment.”
You can also use it when you need to protect someone. There are a bunch of reasons why you might want to protect them. Maybe they…