Page 240 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

Chapter 8 Supporting Your Message 207

These skiers share
a story—one of the
most common ways
in which people
communicate.

• Does the narrative have probability? Narrative probability is the internal
narrative probability
coherence or believability of a narrative. Does a story make sense in and of
The internal coherence or
itself? If you’ve seen the Back to the Future trilogy, you may have wondered
believability of a narrative.
how there could be two Doc Browns and two Marty McFlys and even two
DeLorean time machines at the same time and place. Setting aside Doc’s
explanations of the space-time continuum, trying to sort out the paradoxes
and inconsistencies of time travel is one sure way to a gigantic headache.
When using a narrative to support a speech, it needs to be clearly plausible
to the audience for it to be believed.
• Does the narrative have fidelity? Narrative fi delity is the degree to which
narrative fi delity
a narrative rings true to real-life experience. Even if a story makes sense
The degree to which
internally, it may not make sense in terms of the real world. For example,
a narrative rings true to
in Chapter 7, we mentioned the case of Stephen Glass, a writer for the New
real-life experience.
Republic who was caught making up stories out of whole cloth. In fact, the
story that exposed his fabrications was uncovered by an online publica-
tion, Forbes Digital Tool, because the details of Glass’s account of a youthful
hacker outsmarting a powerful Silicon Valley company did not ring true for
those familiar with technology. For example, the alleged Web site of this
multi-million dollar cutting edge technology company was an amateur-
ish looking AOL site and the “hacker’s convention” he described seemed
implausible. In fact, the location turned out to have been closed on the
very day Glass claimed the convention occurred. Because the details of his
story lacked fi delity, Glass’s lies were exposed. Once one story unraveled, it
soon turned out that most of what he had written for the New Republic was
fabricated.
When we tell a story to an audience, we should let them know if it is true or hy-
pothetical. But either type of story needs to ring true to the audience’s own ex-

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