Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence comes out today. Its author is Lisa Cron. I have only read the Contents section and a few pages of the introduction,… Read More »Telling your story: Tips for success
Albums on which all songs sound more or less the same are boring. Speaking voices that lack variety in pitch, volume, and rhythm are boring. Watching grass grow and paint dry is boring. And so is listening to a business… Read More »Effective communicating: Not just the facts
I had a new client to meet in New York City, so to beat traffic, I left home early and arrived by 7AM, which left me three hours until the meeting. To kill time, I went to The Harvard Club… Read More »It’s a Trap: A public speaking mistake
You’re preparing a presentation and the question comes up, “How much detail should I include?” The answer is, “Just enough,” and that’s not a cop out, because there are so many different circumstances, audiences, and types of presentation. For instance, when… Read More »Presentation Skills: Adjust your level of detail
Last September, the malevolent toadstool you see in the picture on the left thrust its slimy head out of the familiar soil of my front yard. It got my attention. I have rarely had mushrooms in my garden, and never… Read More »Presentation skill #65: Getting attention for the right reasons
Psychologists have demonstrated that people approve of differing responses to crime when it is presented as either a ‘beast’ or a ‘virus’ ravaging society. In the case of the ‘beast’ metaphor, respondents were more likely to call for strong law… Read More »Presentation Tips and Tricks: The Power of Metaphor