Frame Your Story

What will capture people’s attention and emotions? You want the audience to be able to root for you. Know your story arc. Know your two or three main points that you want the audience to understand and have a clear conclusion or the summary. You can get creative with the conclusion.

➊ Boil down your most important point. Remember to keep your target audience top of mind. ➋ Skip the anecdotes. Or jokes or showing off. ➌ Stick to the one-sentence limit. Now write it. ➍ Don’t repeat the tease verbatim. (If you used one.) ➎ Hack off the adverbs, weak words, extraneous words. Is it direct, succinct, clear? ➏ Now ask yourself: If th

think about an elementary-school teacher. She knows her goal: to teach the material mandated by the state curriculum committee. She knows her audience: third graders with a range of knowledge and skills. She knows how to speak effectively—she’s a virtuoso of posture and diction and eye contact. So the goal is clear, the audience is clear, and the f