Dynamic Delivery: Bring Your Story to Life
- Laura Doman
- May 5
- 7 min read
Want to beat AI? Be totally, authentically human. Be a storyteller.
Here’s the truth: AI can process data. It can mimic tone. It can even write a passable email. But there’s one thing it can’t replicate—you. Your quirks, flaws, and “brand of crazy” are what make you interesting, relatable, and memorable to other people. That’s your unfair advantage.
And nothing showcases that advantage better than storytelling. We humans aren’t wired to just pass information along—we’re wired to connect, to move each other, to make each other feel something. Stories aren’t just entertainment; they’re how we share meaning, spark emotions, and create understanding.
If you want to stand out, stop parroting scripts or reading bullet points. Start telling stories. Because while AI can summarize facts, only you can make someone care.
How to be a storyteller
The most effective communicators are storytellers. They know how to get to the essence of a message and find a way to connect themselves and their audience to it. And everything ultimately IS a story, whether it’s to explain year-to-year revenue growth or how to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture.
A good storyteller attributes meaning and purpose to the message and has an emotional investment in telling it. The message may seem dry or run-of-the-mill, but there’s a reason that it’s being shared and why there’s an audience for it. The effective communicator understands that reason and puts it into emotional terms, whether it’s to reassure, educate, inspire, alarm, or entertain the listener or viewer.
When you’re speaking or presenting, ask yourself:
Why am I talking about this product or service?
Who is it going to serve? And how?
Why is it important that I share it at this time?
How do I feel about it?
That last point is very important. Yes, we need to intellectually understand what we’re talking about and why we’re talking about it. But if we’re going to connect with our audience, it’s critical that we have an emotion attached to it, too. An emotion that we feel in relation to our message and that we want our audience to resonate with, as well.
As human beings, we innately first connect to ideas, things, other people, etc. through emotion, through how they make us feel. Intellectual arguments, for better or worse, usually take second place. Our brains are hardwired to learn better if someone’s words hold meaning and purpose, with an emotional driver behind them.
Stories are the oldest and most basic drivers to our hearts and minds. Who doesn’t love a story? Our vast entertainment industry complex is based on multi-media storytelling. Even K12 and corporate education have embraced using videos, interactive instructional design, and virtual reality to make learning experiences more memorable.
So, yes, tell a story! But how you tell it is just as important. It’s the nuances of storytelling – what I call dynamic delivery – that draws us in.
Develop a dynamic delivery
How do you tell a story? I’m going to guess that you dramatize it a bit, especially when you get to the punchline, joke, or pivotal moment right before “the big reveal.” We naturally do this when we’re emotionally invested in telling a story or waiting to see what another person’s reaction will be to it. This is especially true when we’re reading or telling a story to a young child. Half the fun is bringing that child along on the story’s journey and seeing the responses!
Let’s get into some tried and true, practical techniques that you can use to elevate your delivery:
Changing our pace in speaking
Adjusting our volume
Emphasizing certain words or phrases
Using pauses
Together, these techniques can take your listeners or viewers on a ride through your story, so that they stay with you from start to finish. Done well, they’ll remember what they learned and come away thinking they were entertained, as well as informed or persuaded.
Change your pace
I talked about the advantages of fast and slow pacing in a previous newsletter edition (“Pick Your Pace”), but it goes without saying that mixing it up adds interest, context, and meaning to your delivery.
Making an important point? Slow down and people will notice that you’re taking extra time to get a special idea across. Hopefully, they’ll get the hint to pay closer attention! A slower pace is appropriate when sharing technical information or explaining step-by-step how to do something.
Speaking casually or throwing out a joke? You’ll naturally speed up a bit. Your audience will pick up on the extra energy that a quicker pace holds, too. It’s especially useful to draw their attention back to you after presenting more technical or dry material.
Draw your audience in with variations in volume. They'll heighten awareness, add excitement and intrigue, and make your presentation seem more like a shared story.
Vary your volume
No one likes a “shouty man,” an overly enthusiastic used-car salesman, infomercial host, announcer … you know the type.
Still, a higher volume can be used effectively, if judiciously. A slight increase in volume, especially when coupled with a slower pace, tell us that you have something rather important or urgent to say. When coupled with a faster pace, we know that you’re excited or trying to get us excited … as long as you don’t wander into “shouty man” territory.
Slightly lowering your volume can be even more effective. Saying something quietly and slowly tells us that it’s important and perhaps not for everyone to know. We lean in a little and pay more careful attention. It’s an intimate approach.
Lowering your volume and speaking more quickly gives the impression that you and the audience are in together on a secret that must be acted upon quickly. It can be delivered with humor as an inside joke or straight as a serious matter, though the latter is more often found in TV shows and movies than in business videos.
Use emphasis strategically
Want another way to draw your audience’s attention to what you’re saying? Emphasize the important word or phrase. It’s a combination of a pace and volume with a focus on a particular concept.
Just imagine that the key words, phrases, or concepts are in a bold font. They’re meant to stand out. Take your time saying them so that the viewer gets that they’re especially important.
Pause for impact
Sometimes your audience’s biggest reaction is to what you’re NOT saying. People wonder if you’re deliberately leaving something out. Or forgetting your next point. It can be a dramatic effect to draw people in to your message.
A well-placed pause can also give you time to think about what you’re going to say next. It’s so much better than using filler words like “uh” or “you know” as a crutch (see the previous newsletter, “Eliminate Filler Words”). You’ll appear more confident and composed to your audience, too, as a thinker who takes their time to clearly communicate their ideas.
A pause is also a wonderful means to build suspense. A pause mid-sentence will cause your audience to perk up and wonder what’s coming next. After all, you didn’t finish your sentence! It can be almost maddening. Just be sure to deliver on that suspense.
How to connect with your audience
So how do you know when to speed up, slow down, emphasize some points and not others, or add pauses?
Good question. First, don’t overdo any of these techniques or it’ll look like a performance. The best-received speeches, presentations, and appearances are those that look and feel genuine and given “in the moment.”
Focus on telling your story and the main idea(s) you want to share:
What’s especially important?
What do you want your audience to know and remember?
What do you want them to do
These are the points to make memorable with your delivery. You don’t need to plan out how you’ll say anything – in fact, you’re more effective if you just say what you have to say. Keep these elements in the back of your mind and they’ll be there naturally when you need them.
Need a little help staying on track? Tack your main points and the call to action you you’re your audience to follow on a paper mounted right next to the camera lens. Then imagine that the camera is a real person you know who is sincerely interested in your message. Talk as you would to that real, live person who’s just sitting there listening, and your voice will have the natural inflections. If your intent is clear and you believe you’re actively communicating, not just reciting a corporate story, your delivery will be compelling.
Laura's Quick Tips
Tell a story, not just facts.
Ask yourself why it matters.
Feel the emotion behind your story, so your audience feels it, too.
Use dynamic delivery to keep your viewers and listeners hooked.
Focus on what's most important.
Imagine you're talking to a real person who CARES.
Want to know how to apply this in a real-world setting to bring in more clients?
I'm one of more than 20 founders, advisors, and industry experts taking part in the High Performance Founder Summit this month. In an interview with Geek Haus founder Leonard Scheiner, I spilled more than a secret or two about using dynamic delivery to make a major impact online.
See what this virtual summit is all about!
Starting May 19, 2025
I'm Laura Doman, a voice & TV/film actor and video communications coach. As an actor, I create memorable characters that tell my client's stories well, from the friendly CEO to your sassy best gal pal dispensing real-world advice. As a coach, I help you become more comfortable and charismatic on camera in videos, presentations, and online appearances.
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