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Start with an Earthquake... How to Make Presentations That Wow Your Audience
Start With an Earthquake... How to make presentations that wow your audience is designed to help anyone deliver a speech that is dynamic, creative and memorable. Using this book, readers can explore what gives a speech impact, through language, gesture, vocal variety and rhetorical devices. It focuses on making a speech more creative, and advises how preparing yourself practically, physically, vocally and emotionally can help banish speech-day panic. It also clarifies why PowerPoint is generally unhelpful (and almost always badly used) and reveals a fool-proof method for constructing a speech from the initial idea to the final delivery. Tim Stockil spent ten years in the theatre as a director before moving into training, so he understands both the concept of top quality performance and how to draw it out of even the most nervous and tongue-tied subject. Central to his method is to ensure that you have both a topic (what your speech is about) and an objective (what you want your audience to feel and do as a result of your presentation). Stockil insists that no speech should ever just be about imparting information, though many people in business fail to realise this. With his theatrical background, he shows how to rehearse properly - again, something that most business people fail to do. Stockil peppers the text with real-life experiences of his 25 years of running courses on presentation skills and coaching people one-to-one. Readers will find examples of speeches and the people who gave them, successful and otherwise. These include a long extract from a very powerful contemporary speech, which is accompanied by notes which demonstrate why it is so effective. Start With an Earthquake... is ideal for those who work in business or have to face presentations on a daily basis. However, the book would also be helpful to anyone making a speech, from a wedding to the Rotary Club.
- GenresCommunication
192 pages, Paperback
First published July 23, 2013
168 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 19, 2018
This is a practical approach to creating and delivering presentations, regardless of subject (it’s not about sales pitches). It takes a performance perspective, hence examples from great speeches, stressing the importance of “putting it on its feet” (practising out loud to people), and the title:
“We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and builds up to a climax.”
Sam Goldwyn
Post-it Mind Map
Many of us have endured “death by PowerPoint”. Stockil hates it with a passion, not just for the obvious reasons that people tend to put too many words on slides and then just read them, create fancy things that distract, or that you’re helpless if the tech fails, as it often does.
His fundamental concern is that PowerPoint imposes a linear straitjacket from the start of your planning.
Instead, he advocates forming and exploring ideas in a more fluid and amorphous way, moving things around until groupings coalesce and eventually, the necessary sequence becomes clear.
If the subject of your presentation is inherently chronological (explaining the stages of a new manufacturing process, for example), it may not make much difference. For me, it was huge. What I’ve ended up with is not what I initially assumed, nor what I would have created if I’d started in PowerPoint.
This is Stockil’s main idea:
1. Topic: in the middle.
2. Objective: effect on audience attitude and behaviour. It must have emotional impact. Put next to Topic.
3. What do the audience want/need to know? Scatter mini notes, one per item. Then group them.
4. Check how mini Post-its relate to what I can and want to present. Adjust if necessary.
5. Move them around to create a journey, including add and removing.
Image: my Post-it mind map
Mitigating PowerPoint
Avoid PowerPoint if at all possible.
If you have to use it, only create slides right at the end of all your planning. Have as few slides as possible, predominantly pictures, graphs, or diagrams, not words. Never have more than 5 bullets per slide: list headings not content, let alone sentences.
If the audience are likely to want detail to take away, consider handouts at the end - but tell them at the start, so they can concentrate on listening.
Put It on Its Feet
It’s a performance, so you need to practise in front of others. This is for fluency, feedback, and timing.
Try to express energy, passion, and variety of tone and stress and pace - as when reading a story to a child.
Plan, but don’t script, and don’t write notes down too soon because your focus should be on speaking, not writing and reading. Talk, as you might over dinner with friends. (I’m not sure about that, because a presentation is predominantly one-way, rather than conversational.)
Rhetoric and Language
All the usual guidelines about clear, concrete, simple, active English, avoiding jargon and clichés.
Pronouns matter: use “we” for community, but “us/them” for competitors.
Rule of three: two to define a pattern, plus a third for twist/contrast (lies, damned lies, and statistics, for example).
Don’t be afraid of pauses:
“What makes a fire burn is space between the logs, a breathing space.”
From “Fire” by Judy Brown
Other Points
Distinguish between facts that are interesting and facts that are not
You’re giving the audience a present. It should be about what they need or want. It’s not about the presenter. But it does need to be personal, to make connections and paint a picture. Tell stories.
There must be an emotional aspect because the audience will remember how you made them feel more than what you said.
Dealing with Questions
Aim to leave time for questions. To encourage that, you can use phrases like:
• I expect some of you are wondering if…
• I didn’t have time to cover x, but…
• Or ask them a question.
You can possibly prime a friend to ask a question, but do not ever plant a specific question.
Repeat each question: that ensures everyone hears it, that you’ve understood it properly, and gives a few seconds extra thinking time.
With a tricky question, you can turn it round and ask what the questioner thinks, or why they’re asking.
If you can’t answer, don’t be afraid to admit it. Throw it open to the audience, or promise to look into it and get back to the person. But remember to do so.
Practicalities
Find out as much as you can about equipment, seating, likely numbers etc beforehand. Prepare for the unexpected, such as equipment failure or difficult questions.
There are a few tips for physical relaxation and energy boost: stretch, clench, breath slowly, hum etc.
The Book’s Format and Style
The content is nicely chunked, broken down, highlighted, and reiterated. It’s good for skimming to recap.
Oddly, there are no illustrations, charts, or diagrams, despite the importance of them if you need to do slides. A book is a different medium, but still odd.
There is a summary and bibliography, but the Contents lists only chapter titles not subheadings, and (unforgivably for a technical book) there is no index.
Pair this with...
I worked through this alongside Andi Lightheart's Presentation Now - see my review HERE.
They reinforced and contrasted each other well. Many of the key points are the same, but refreshed by being explained in a slightly different way. However good these sorts of books are, you have to tailor the advice a little, and having two sources actually makes that easier.
“We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and builds up to a climax.”
Sam Goldwyn
Post-it Mind Map
Many of us have endured “death by PowerPoint”. Stockil hates it with a passion, not just for the obvious reasons that people tend to put too many words on slides and then just read them, create fancy things that distract, or that you’re helpless if the tech fails, as it often does.
His fundamental concern is that PowerPoint imposes a linear straitjacket from the start of your planning.
Instead, he advocates forming and exploring ideas in a more fluid and amorphous way, moving things around until groupings coalesce and eventually, the necessary sequence becomes clear.
If the subject of your presentation is inherently chronological (explaining the stages of a new manufacturing process, for example), it may not make much difference. For me, it was huge. What I’ve ended up with is not what I initially assumed, nor what I would have created if I’d started in PowerPoint.
This is Stockil’s main idea:
1. Topic: in the middle.
2. Objective: effect on audience attitude and behaviour. It must have emotional impact. Put next to Topic.
3. What do the audience want/need to know? Scatter mini notes, one per item. Then group them.
4. Check how mini Post-its relate to what I can and want to present. Adjust if necessary.
5. Move them around to create a journey, including add and removing.
Image: my Post-it mind map
Mitigating PowerPoint
Avoid PowerPoint if at all possible.
If you have to use it, only create slides right at the end of all your planning. Have as few slides as possible, predominantly pictures, graphs, or diagrams, not words. Never have more than 5 bullets per slide: list headings not content, let alone sentences.
If the audience are likely to want detail to take away, consider handouts at the end - but tell them at the start, so they can concentrate on listening.
Put It on Its Feet
It’s a performance, so you need to practise in front of others. This is for fluency, feedback, and timing.
Try to express energy, passion, and variety of tone and stress and pace - as when reading a story to a child.
Plan, but don’t script, and don’t write notes down too soon because your focus should be on speaking, not writing and reading. Talk, as you might over dinner with friends. (I’m not sure about that, because a presentation is predominantly one-way, rather than conversational.)
Rhetoric and Language
All the usual guidelines about clear, concrete, simple, active English, avoiding jargon and clichés.
Pronouns matter: use “we” for community, but “us/them” for competitors.
Rule of three: two to define a pattern, plus a third for twist/contrast (lies, damned lies, and statistics, for example).
Don’t be afraid of pauses:
“What makes a fire burn is space between the logs, a breathing space.”
From “Fire” by Judy Brown
Other Points
Distinguish between facts that are interesting and facts that are not
You’re giving the audience a present. It should be about what they need or want. It’s not about the presenter. But it does need to be personal, to make connections and paint a picture. Tell stories.
There must be an emotional aspect because the audience will remember how you made them feel more than what you said.
Dealing with Questions
Aim to leave time for questions. To encourage that, you can use phrases like:
• I expect some of you are wondering if…
• I didn’t have time to cover x, but…
• Or ask them a question.
You can possibly prime a friend to ask a question, but do not ever plant a specific question.
Repeat each question: that ensures everyone hears it, that you’ve understood it properly, and gives a few seconds extra thinking time.
With a tricky question, you can turn it round and ask what the questioner thinks, or why they’re asking.
If you can’t answer, don’t be afraid to admit it. Throw it open to the audience, or promise to look into it and get back to the person. But remember to do so.
Practicalities
Find out as much as you can about equipment, seating, likely numbers etc beforehand. Prepare for the unexpected, such as equipment failure or difficult questions.
There are a few tips for physical relaxation and energy boost: stretch, clench, breath slowly, hum etc.
The Book’s Format and Style
The content is nicely chunked, broken down, highlighted, and reiterated. It’s good for skimming to recap.
Oddly, there are no illustrations, charts, or diagrams, despite the importance of them if you need to do slides. A book is a different medium, but still odd.
There is a summary and bibliography, but the Contents lists only chapter titles not subheadings, and (unforgivably for a technical book) there is no index.
Pair this with...
I worked through this alongside Andi Lightheart's Presentation Now - see my review HERE.
They reinforced and contrasted each other well. Many of the key points are the same, but refreshed by being explained in a slightly different way. However good these sorts of books are, you have to tailor the advice a little, and having two sources actually makes that easier.
Displaying 1 of 1 review