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But if you want to move an audience, then draw pictures on the whiteboard of their own minds with the velvety ink of your words. Slides are best used for information transfer. Why? Because the purpose of this speech is to motivate and move an audience, not inform and instruct them. This speech would NOT be stronger by showing pictures of a cancelled check, the red hills of Georgia or – heaven forbid - a list of bullet points outlining his complaints. Especially, King uses metaphors persistently: the manacles of segregation and chains of discrimination, lonely island of poverty midst a vast ocean of prosperity, quicksand of racial injustice.ĥ. King was a master of analogies, like calling the broken promises a bad check. Comparing one thing to another makes audiences transfer the characteristics of one thing (eg. Action words are also picture words: sear, languish, sit down together.Ĥ. King sprinkles his speech with picture words of ordinary things that are easy to imagine: flames, ocean, island, check, hills, table. These picture words direct the audience to imagine an inner world and enter a sort of trance - called the storylistening trance - that makes them more likely to accept the speaker’s words. Great stories, the kinds that make an audience holds its breath and get caught up in the speaker’s narrative, use picture words. The world is out of balance, not because the black man does not have equal rights, but because he was promised equal rights 100 years ago and those promises are still not fulfilled.ģ. In this case, the inciting incident was promises broken. All great stories begin with something happening – a specific incident – that puts the hero’s world out of balance. Amazingly, according to Nick Morgan, he may have improvised this section.Ģ. Finally, he moves to the future (“I have a dream”), painting a picture of a glorious future. He starts his speech with the past (“five score years ago”), then moves to the present (“but 100 years later, the Negro is still not free”) where he elaborates on the many promises that were broken. King’s speech is arranged along a loose timeline, with a beginning, middle and end. Classic story structure with a beginning, middle and end. I use this speech text in my corporate workshops to illustrate five important storytelling principles.ġ. In fact, there are numerous storytelling lessons we can learn from King’s speech that you can use in your next boardroom or ballroom presentation. In Resonate, Nancy Duarte uses the “I Have a Dream” speech to illustrate the use of the Duarte storytelling method, which consists of alternately contrasting what is today and what could be in the future.