How do we create conflict?

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From the course by National Research Tomsk State University

Presentation skills: Speechwriting and Storytelling

106 ratings

National Research Tomsk State University

Presentation skills: Speechwriting and Storytelling

106 ratings

Course 1 of 4 in the Specialization Presentation Skills: Speechwriting, Slides and Delivery

“99% presentations suck!”, — said Apple former evangelist Guy Kawasaki in 2005. Up to now the situation hasn’t improved yet. Why? Most public speaking courses focus on “how” instead of “what & why”. How to stand, walk and talk during delivery with little attention paid to “what” — the quality of storytelling itself. Thereby a usual result is a looking slightly confident speaker with mesmerizing voice delivering an obscure mess of facts, figures and claims. In this course we take a more systematic approach, focusing on the content. How to structure your ideas, facts and data into a logical convincing story using a narrative structure. This course covers fundamentals of scriptwriting, packing, argumentation and language. This course is not about how to fabricate a catching tale, but rather how to structure your ideas, facts and data into an interesting story you are going to tell during your presentation.

From the lesson

Part 2: Sustaining interest

This week is about the storytelling and how to apply it to your presentation content. What a story is in a nutshell. Why stories are the best form of conveying information. How to create a conflict. How to sustain interest of the audience during your middle part of the presentation.

Sustaining interest. Stories.1:57

What's a story structure?6:56

How do we create conflict?4:32

"They are the problem"7:44

"We are the problem"2:57

"Your thinking is the problem"4:57

Sustaining interest4:40

What do you do once you found a conflict?7:13

Meet the Instructors

Alexei Kapterev
Lomonosov MSU BS

How do we create conflict?

Well, we need to have something that they call the antithesis.

You have your main point,

your thesis, your goals, your idea,

and you need to provide a counterpoint,

something for the audience to choose from.

For example, if you're selling this wonderful laptop computer,

this is your thesis: buy this wonderful laptop computer.

Your antithesis would be... Well,

it could be many things actually. That's the question.

The art is to find the proper counterpoint.

You should ask yourself,

"What is the real choice for the audience?

What is the audience choosing between?"

And maybe, they are choosing between a laptop computer and a desktop computer.

And here you are,

you have a fight in your presentation.

Round one, go!

Desktops versus laptops.

Maybe they are thinking about a different brand of a laptop computer,

and then you need to compare your laptop computer with another laptop computer.

Maybe they are choosing between a laptop and a tablet computer.

And there you are, you have your presentation.

You have an idea that, of course,

tablets is this new thing and they're great for certain areas.

For example, if you are primarily consuming content, tablets are ideal.

But if you want to do some real job,

if you want to create content then maybe what you need,

you need a solid laptop.

And ultimately, this is all a fight for money.

Maybe the audience isn't in the buying mood at all.

Maybe they do not want to buy anything.

Maybe what they want is just have their $1,000 stacked under their pillow.

And you have to probably,

you have to probably address this concern as well.

So, the question is who is fighting whom for what?

If you answer that question,

your presentation will have drama.

Well, in my example,

laptops are fighting tablets for money of the audience.

So, here are four ways you can create conflict in your presentation.

You might say there's a problem.

There's a huge problem,

like a rain, or fire, or drought, etc., etc.

You can say, "They are the problem."

You can point at somebody and say,

"Tablets are the problem or desktops are the problem."

You can say, "We are the problem.

We were the ones who sold you this old desktop before,

but now we're coming to you with a much better solution."

Or you can say,

"You are the problem."

And I would argue later on that this is what you ultimately should be accomplishing.

Let's talk about thing number one.

This is Al Gore and he is talking about a huge problem called global warming.

Now, this is a very hard problem to

address because it doesn't concern anything in particular.

This is no one else's problem.

So problems like that global problems are very hard to sell to the audience.

And this, of course,

where his art, his craft comes into play.

This is why he's such a master salesman,

such a master presenter,

because he was able to sell such a global thing and nobody's

problem to a particular member of a particular audience.

This is Elon Musk.

In the beginning of his presentations about batteries,

essentially, what he has,

he has a number of slides.

I think four slides about the problem of global warming itself.

He doesn't need to sell this problem to the audience,

the problem was already solved 10 years ago by Al Gore.

Elon Musk is just trying to sell you some batteries,

but in the beginning he needs to remind you that

the problem indeed does exist and that the problem is real.

And he had a number of slides in his presentation to remind you of that.

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