Your favourite story may be the part of your speech that needs to go. It can be moving, beautifully written and completely true—and still interrupt the message you are trying to build.

The test is not simply whether people will enjoy hearing it. The test is whether your speech needs it.

The Problem

When you have lived through something significant, leaving it out can feel like denying its importance. So you include the difficult beginning, the unexpected opportunity, the second setback and another experience that taught you something similar.

Each story matters to you. But the audience receives them in sequence, looking for a connection. If every episode delivers essentially the same lesson, the speech keeps arriving at the same destination instead of moving forward.

This is how a presentation becomes a collection of memorable moments without a clear direction. Listeners may remember an incident yet struggle to explain what the whole speech was saying.

The difficulty is separating personal significance from structural purpose. An experience can deserve a place in your writing without deserving a place in this particular presentation.

The Solution

Writing to present—the focus of the chapter theme in Gerard Grogans’s Transformational Speaker Trainer—means shaping lived experience for listeners, not preserving every meaningful event. The practical discipline is to give each story a distinct job.

First, write the message without the stories. Complete this sentence in plain language: “By the end, I want listeners to understand that…” Make the answer specific enough to guide your choices. “Preparation matters” is broad. “Preparation should test whether your explanation makes sense to someone unfamiliar with it” gives you something concrete to develop.

Next, identify what each story contributes. One might reveal the cost of an ineffective approach. Another might show how a different approach worked. A third might expose a limitation the audience needs to understand. Those are different jobs, and their differences can create movement.

For example, imagine a presentation about explaining complex work. An opening story could show a carefully prepared explanation leaving listeners confused. A later story could demonstrate how testing a simpler version revealed what was missing. The second episode advances the first: it supplies the practical response to the problem already established.

But another account of confused listeners may only repeat the opening. Unless it reveals something essential and new, it is a candidate for removal.

Then try the removal test. Take one story out and read the passages on either side aloud. Does an important step disappear? Does a later conclusion lose its support? Or does the message become easier to follow?

Do not judge only by the emotional gap. You may miss telling the story while the speech works better without it.

Finally, save removed material separately. Editing is a decision about placement, not a verdict on the value of your experience. A story that distracts here may become the centre of another presentation.

The Key Takeaway

Keep a story because it moves the message forward, not merely because it is powerful on its own.

Your Homework

Today, take one speech draft and write its central message at the top. Beside every story, note the specific job it performs. Find two stories doing the same job, then temporarily remove one and read the revised sequence aloud. Restore it only if you can name the essential understanding that disappears without it; otherwise, save it for another speech.

Make that editorial choice now. You do not need to tell everything to say something that matters. Keep becoming a storyteller who knows both what to share and what to leave for another day.