Your humble correspondent has recently begun reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, and regardless of the relatively divisive topic, Foer has already proven himself a great storyteller. His book, part memoir, part investigative report, begins– as all great things do– with a story. In fact, his first chapter is entitled Storytelling.
Right from the start, Foer challenges the average reader’s cultural norms. “Why is pasta not a breakfast food? Why is that parsley on the plate for decoration? Why don’t we eat dogs?” He asks these questions to highlight how important stories are in determining why we eat what we do. “Stories establish narratives, and stories establish rules,” he writes. The stories we’re told about food regulate the choices we make. They make certain foods acceptable to eat and other foods unacceptable; stories give our food connotations and significance.
The same goes for all other parts of our lives. Why do we watch certain television shows? Why do we enjoy the hobbies that we do? Why do we form the relationships we do? Each of these questions can be answered by telling a story.
Foer nuances his arguments against eating animals by mentioning, at the outset, why he, of all people, shouldn’t feel that way. His grandmother was a Jewish woman who survived the horrors of the Second World War in Europe. She would pick him up to weigh him as a child to make sure he was getting enough to eat. Foer grew up hearing stories about how desperate her search for food was and how she struggled to find enough to stay alive. His grandmother would, rightfully so, find it absurd to not eat meat out of principle. She ate to survive.
By telling a story that at once muddies and complicates his point, Foer strengthens his argument, for he is saying that despite my story, my history, my past, I still believe this is right. This is a very effective way to nuance and intensify an argument, and it is a technique that can be used well in presentations.
Connect with the audience by addressing the other side of the argument. Connect by offering a reason why you shouldn’t necessarily be arguing what you are. By nuancing your argument, you are nuancing yourself. You are making 3D what was flat; you are inviting the audience to connect with your story and therefore, with yourself. Life is rarely one-dimensional. Be sure to show other sides of the story.
Foer also makes a poignant observation about the necessity to apply a framework, a backstory to facts to create meaning. “Facts are important, but they don’t, on their own, provide meaning– especially when they are so bound to linguistic choices,” Foer writes. As a presenter, you can spout off fact after fact, statistic after statistic, graph after graph, but it won’t have a powerful meaning unless you provide context.
When facts standalone, they can be twisted and tweaked to provide whatever meaning we want them to (just look at the news coverage of Fox News and MSNBC for evidence). “But place facts in a story, a story of compassion or domination, or maybe both– place them in a story about the world we live in and who we are and who we want to be– and you can begin to speak meaningfully about eating animals,” or any other topic. Facts have meaning when we ascribe meaning to them. They have meaning when we place them in the context of who we are and how we live. Nuance, complicate and explain data by placing it in a compelling framework, in an engaging story that intoxicates the audience with its import.
