5 Storytelling Lessons from Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” Speech

In Resonate, Nancy Duarte uses the “I Have a Dream” speech to illustrate the use of the Duarte storytelling method, which consists of alternately contrasting what is today and what could be in the future.

In fact, there are numerous storytelling lessons we can learn from King’s speech that you can use in your next boardroom or ballroom presentation. I use this speech text in my corporate workshops to illustrate five important storytelling principles.

1. Classic story structure with a beginning, middle and end. King’s speech is arranged along a loose timeline, with a beginning, middle and end. He starts his speech with the past (“five score years ago”), then moves to the present (“but 100 years later, the Negro is still not free”) where he elaborates on the many promises that were broken. Finally, he moves to the future (“I have a dream”), painting a picture of a glorious future. Amazingly, according to Nick Morgan, he may have improvised this section.

2. Inciting Incident. All great stories begin with something happening – a specific incident – that puts the hero’s world out of balance. In this case, the inciting incident was promises broken. The world is out of balance, not because the black man does not have equal rights, but because he was promised equal rights 100 years ago and those promises are still not fulfilled.

3. Picture words. Great stories, the kinds that make an audience holds its breath and get caught up in the speaker’s narrative, use picture words. These picture words direct the audience to imagine an inner world and enter a sort of trance — called the storylistening trance — that makes them more likely to accept the speaker’s words. King sprinkles his speech with picture words of ordinary things that are easy to imagine: flames, ocean, island, check, hills, table. Action words are also picture words: sear, languish, sit down together.

4. Analogies and metaphors. Comparing one thing to another makes audiences transfer the characteristics of one thing (eg. mighty stream) onto the other thing (eg. justice). King was a master of analogies, like calling the broken promises a bad check. Especially, King uses metaphors persistently: the manacles of segregation and chains of discrimination, lonely island of poverty midst a vast ocean of prosperity, quicksand of racial injustice.

5. No slides. This speech would NOT be stronger by showing pictures of a cancelled check, the red hills of Georgia or – heaven forbid — a list of bullet points outlining his complaints. Why? Because the purpose of this speech is to motivate and move an audience, not inform and instruct them. Slides are best used for information transfer. But if you want to move an audience, then draw pictures on the whiteboard of their own minds with the velvety ink of your words.

PowerPoint slides are terrific for influencing and persuading in the boardroom, where the audience wants to see your analysis and to engage in a discussion about your assumptions. And you can still use analogies and stories to enhance your presentation.

But when you want to rattle the chains of your audience’s heart and stir the simmering coals of their courage, then throw off the shackles of the clicker and rain storytelling on them like a mighty storm.

About the author: Bruce Gabrielle is author of Speaking PowerPoint: the new language of business, showing a 12-step method for creating clearer and more persuasive PowerPoint slides for boardroom presentations. Subscribe to this blog or join my LinkedIn group to get new posts sent to your inbox.