A flame should be lighted at the commencement and kept alive with unremitting splendour to the end.

Michael Faraday, English chemist and author of Advice to a Lecturer

If you cannot interest your audience in what you are saying you are dead as a speaker. How do you capture and hold the interest of an audience?

The first rule, of course, is to be interested yourself in what you are talking about and the people to whom you are talking – in that order. And you have to communicate that double interest to your audience with enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm, however quiet and unassuming, is your ace card. Your audience will find it hard to resist your enthusiasm in the content of your speech, which is your interest blazing and crackling with happy flames. It is extremely difficult for an enthusiastic speaker to be dull, so take courage.

The wider principle of vividness (see Idea 15) covers all that goes to make what you say interesting, arresting and attractive. From the Latin verb vivere meaning ‘to live’, the word vivid literally translates as ‘full of life’.