Use your own experiences to tell stories.

Stories can be a powerful narrative resource when preparing a speech. Using them, in a logical way and trying to connect with the essence of the main message of your speech, will allow you to direct the audience towards the development of a more enjoyable and easy to understand message. A story can be inspired by fictitious or anecdotal elements, whether they are someone else's or your own. When the story we tell alludes to our own experiences, it generates a more natural communication, impacting the listener's sensibility.

Building stories that reflect part of our reality and daily experiences is an excellent idea when approaching for the first time the use of this resource in public speaking. During the development of this session, we will be going deeper into this topic, so that you can have more elements when preparing your presentations.

Advantages of using our own experiences: It is common for some experienced speakers to recreate stories based on other people's experiences or simply use fiction to embellish their arguments. This practice is not the most recommended for a novice speaker, since it can suffer from a lack of naturalness or contradictions that distort the message. When we rely on our own experiences, we are able to re-experience, with great accuracy, the real sensations and feelings associated with the events narrated. A story of our own will be conveyed in a more convincing way and will not lose its essence, even if it is retold numerous times.

Another advantage of using our own experiences is the ease with which we can adjust the length of the story, depending on the length of the presentation. It is much easier to simplify or extend one's own story, knowing in advance what the essential points are and having complementary elements that can be introduced if necessary.

Greater legitimacy: Stories based on our experiences, as a general rule, have greater legitimacy in the eyes of the audience. People like to hear how the speaker has suffered or experienced an event that, in one way or another, has contributed to their current experience. When we narrate other people's experiences, we lose the connection between the real feeling of the person who has suffered and the person who is telling the story. It is easy to answer questions, expand the arguments or go deeper into one's own anecdotes than into those of others. The legitimacy of the speaker's experiences is very important if we want to preserve the sense of credibility that will keep the listener connected to the speaker.

Fictitious elements: As we have expressed above, fictitious elements can be useful both to build and to embellish a story. If you want to add fictional elements to make the story more engaging or to emphasize the story's message, start with your own experiences. It will be easier to approach the use of this technique when you have a real story as a basis, since the fictional elements will only serve as a decorative complement, without deviating from the real line of events.

Keep in mind that the introduction of fictitious elements requires a greater narrative skill. This skill will be acquired progressively over time, as you increase the number of papers produced. Knowing this, it is recommended that you at least have a real story that supports the essence of the message, even when the fictitious elements are not well elaborated or generate contradictions.