15: Putting It All Together
The last chapter is a narrative about "you," the reader, faced with a speaking engagement and the way in which the information in this book can be helpful.
The author proposes that you have been asked to speak at a charity fundraiser, in which many people in your community will be present - your friends and neighbors, and important people you have never met but whom you wish to impress. And of course you want your speech to get people to open their wallets for the charity. There's a great deal of excitement an anxiety, but most of all the daunting task of putting together the speech.
This book should have taught you that your speech is an emotional journey: that succeeding means getting people to donate, and that means getting them to feel sympathy to the cause and good about the prospect of supporting it.
You also realize that you must begin where the audience is, as they are attending a social event and will be relaxed and happy, but a bit dreadful that they are going to be pressed upon to give money to a cause.
You could leverage the emotion of sorrow for the beneficiaries of the charity, or the emotion of guilt for their good fortune. But these are both negative emotions, to which people are not going to be receptive - no-one goes to a social event to be made to feel bad. So instead, you choose to leverage the emotion of hopefulness and the sense that supporting the cause is a demonstration of their good character. Donating should be an act that reinforces positive emotions rather than relieving negative ones - and if you do it right, they will be willing to donate regularly as a way to sustain these emotions.
With the beginning and end of your journey planned, you find the information you need to take the audience from one to the other: a combination of facts about the operations of the charity, before and after stories of people whom the charity has helped. The speech follows a plotline, just like a story, of bringing people out of tragedy to a safe place - the profoundness of their gratitude, and the righteous sense of accomplishment that is felt by helping them make that journey.
You then realize that you have to do all of that in half an hour, and plot a timeline of the emotional changes that must take place from start to finish, and the best material you have that will accomplish each step along the way. Finally, when you have crafted and practiced, your speech is ready.
(EN: The author leaves off here, with a sample speech he wrote for just such an event. He does not go on to describe the delivery of the speech itself.)