Real World or Fantasy?

Speeches are made better by stories.  This past week, I combined both real-world and made-up stories into a well-received speech.

I opened my speech in the style of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book.  "You creep in to the dark and dank cavern..."  The upshot of the opening is that I am introducing the audience to the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, a game in which players pretend to be characters in a (usually) fantasy world.

This wasn't just a speech about fantasy, though.  I proceeded to talk about how players of the game must each make a different character, and each character should have a different skillset for the players to succeed in the game.  I then related this fantasy to the real world where we must form diverse teams if we want to succeed.

To make my point, I told a real world story of forming a team to organize our annual District 24 Toastmasters Conference to be held April 22-23.  I have a wonderful team with diverse backgrounds, skills, and perspectives.  This will help make the conference a success, just like having an adventuring party with a diverse set of skills in the make-believe fantasy realm of Dungeons & Dragons helps the players of that game succeed.

In this speech I told two stories:  one made up (with Dungeons & Dragons) and one real (with my Conference team), but they tied together nicely.  I got feedback that people liked the engaging opening as well as my example from my life.  I don't think my speech would have been as impactful if I just had one or the other.  We all must live in the real world, but sometimes our presentations can benefit from a little bit of fantasy, too.

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