Its blood fell all over a tribal village. I killed the crocodile and threw it onto a nearby hill. I jumped into the water, fought with the crocodile with one hand and held the lady close to me as she was unconscious. “A crocodile hit the boat and the woman fell into the water. “I wanted the audience to be glued to my speech,” he says, and they surely must have been enthralled by his tale of saving a woman and her movie-producer husband from a savage monster. “The real kicker was the last line … the audience roared with laughter. He won the contest, which concluded at the Area level. Venkata Ramana Dittakavi, of Hyderabad Toastmasters in Hyderabad, Telangana, India, competed in a Tall Tales Contest in District 82 (now District 98) in 2008. Some tales, however, succeed exactly because they’re so over-the-top outlandish-a thrill ride steered by an expert storyteller. “I think that is the telltale sign of a great Tall Tales speech the story is not so far-fetched that it couldn’t be true.” “At the end of the speech, I wanted my audience to wonder, ‘Did that really happen?’” he says. He froze and I escaped back to my girlfriend’s arms. To get my revenge, I had to create an Achilles heel for my villain so I could exploit it, and that was the fear of heights.” This villain chased Cravalho to the top of the bell tower, “and once he had me cornered, all I had to do was remind him how high off the ground he was trigger his fear of heights. I was crushed and somehow wanted to take revenge on him for stealing my girl. “In high school, the love of my life broke up with me and started dating an athlete. To craft his tale, Cravalho started with a true story and embellished it to a fantastic, but still believable, level. It ends with Billy freezing in fear-and Cravalho laughing maniacally. In the story, Cravalho loses his high school sweetheart to his arch-enemy, Big Billy Beeterman, and he exacts revenge on Billy. Imagined and performed by Accredited Speaker Robert Cravalho of Na Hoku Kai Toastmasters in Honolulu, Hawaii, it was the winning entry at the District 49 contest in 2013. “The Prom Queen” certainly fills that bill. According to the Toastmasters International Speech Contest Rulebook, the Tall Tales Contest speeches are to be three to five minutes long and their subject “must be of a highly exaggerated, improbable nature and have a theme or plot.” Tall tales are like storytelling on steroids, and in that spirit, the Tall Tales Contest challenges speakers to turn up their oratorical heat. However, even if a District does not hold the event, clubs still can. Some hold the contest at their District conference some don’t hold it all. The Tall Tales Contest is an optional speech contest for Districts. You may remember them from childhood: heroes like Paul Bunyan, America’s giant lumberjack, clearing millions of acres with a single swing of his ax Crooked Mick, the champion Australian sheep shearer who really does move mountains Finn MacCool, the Irish hunter-warrior who creates the Isle of Man when he hurls a clump of Ireland at a rival and it lands in the Irish Sea. They motivate a Toastmaster to develop and enhance storytelling skills.”Īlmost every culture has its tall tales, often starring at least one superhuman character who performs mind-boggling feats. Therefore, they have a plot with a beginning, middle, and end characters and action. “This particular kind of speech is beneficial for a Toastmaster to do because it stimulates creativity and originality. “I love tall tales,” says Williams, a member of Naples Advanced Toastmasters and Fort Myers Toastmasters in southwest Florida. The tales are part of a worldwide folk tradition that’s celebrated as one of Toastmasters International’s officially sanctioned speech competitions, the Tall Tales Contest. These particular whoppers were told, respectively, by Toastmasters Mary Lou Williams, DTM Robert Cravalho, DTM and Venkata Ramana Dittakavi. They’re tall tales: entertaining stories that stretch the truth and the imagination of both storyteller and audience. A hero who saves a beautiful woman and an entire village from a savage crocodile. A high school nerd who vanquishes his nemesis. A fish called Rover who gets hooked on classic movies.
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