In our Creating and Telling Personal Stories class last Thursday night, Shelly Siegel asked an important question: What’s the difference between a story and a speech? That stayed with me, and this is my attempt to concisely describe some of the differences between these two narrative forms. Oversimplified? Probably, but not untrue.
- Function:
- A story is meant to engage (entertain, transport, evoke).
- A speech is meant to inform (convince, argue, persuade).
- Direction:
- The energy of a story is horizontal (flat, egalitarian, populist, visiting).
- The energy of a speech is vertical (hierarchical, pedantic, academic, informing).
- Action:
- A story is meant to synthesize and connect.
- A speech is meant to analyze and parse.
- Delivery:
- A story is told from memory.
- A speech is read from a text.
- Both will get you to the other side, but:
- A story is like stepping-stones.
- A speech is like a bridge.
- Parallel forms:
- A story is an oral cartoon.
- A speech is an oral essay.
- Essential elements:
- A story links a series of images to create meaning.
- A speech links a series of ideas to influence and persuade.
- Success:
- A story succeeds by first engaging the senses.
- A speech succeeds by first engaging the mind.
- Meaning:
- The meaning of a story can be explicit or implicit.
- The meaning of a speech must be explicit.
- Focus of engagement:
- A story engages the heart, and if the mind comes along, well then, that’s fine.
- A speech engages the mind to sway the heart.
- Truth and Facts:
- A story relates truth that may or may not be verifiably factual.
- A speech is based in provable facts and evidence.
- Role:
- The storyteller is the guide.
- The speaker is the expert.
- How they work:
- A story narrates a sequence of events and leaves listeners with a sense of new or enhanced understanding, or of how something is different or has changed since the beginning of the story.
- A speech asserts a thesis, provides evidence to support that thesis, and then restates the thesis at the conclusion.
For example, in Ben Cooper's recent story about his relationship with death, he intentionally used a string of pearls structure which is not unlike an essay format. But right away, he engaged us in the images and emotions of his life to show what he wanted us to understand about his experience. If he’d written a speech or an essay on the same subject, it might have had this structure:
Thesis: Grappling with death is a common childhood experience.
Argument 1: The loss of a pet.
Argument 2: Witnessing a death.
Argument 3: Coming to terms with their own mortality.
Conclusion: While painful and confusing, experiences with death are an important part of child development.
If he’d given this speech, we could have used aspects of his personal story to support his evidence, but that evidence would have had be verifiable, in a publication or some other way external to his experience. Since he told a story, Ben connected with us by relating episodes from his life that left us with an enhanced understanding of him and his experiences.
The image below speaks to me, as it combines the ideas of story as stepping-stones and storyteller as guide.
The image at the top of the post can be found here.
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