Chapter 10
Putting It All Together
It takes one hour of preparation for each minute of presentation time.
—Wayne Burgraff
Getting Started
Whether you have a few days or several months to prepare your big talk, we want you to think small. What we mean is: Don’t get ahead of yourself. Thinking about “everything” right now is unproductive, not to mention crazy-making. And you don’t have to do it. In fact, it’s better if you take this journey in short strides, not long gaits. We’ve compartmentalized these strides into seven manageable steps. Each step prepares you for the next one and gets you closer to an amazing speech. So, let’s get going!
Step One: Hunting and Gathering
Whatever the occasion or topic, you’re going to have to gather some intel. We call this hunting and gathering because that’s what you’re doing. Whether giving a best man’s toast, keynote, class speech, or commencement address, you need information, lots of it. Of course, the type of speech will determine the kind of information you’re after; but no matter, this is the step when you cast a wide net and find out as much as you can about your topic. Don’t worry about how you’re going to use or structure this information. The focus right now is only on finding information.
In almost all cases, this means an Internet search. Go wide. Look for journal articles, videos, radio interviews, poems, quotes, statistics, and human interest stories. If your topic is personality-driven, like a wedding anniversary or eulogy, you’ll also want to interview friends and relatives for stories, anecdotes, and facts. Spend at least a couple of days rifling through records, fingering through family albums, and discovering data. Keep in mind that low-hanging fruit is easier to pick, but often the juiciest and tastiest prizes require more of a stretch. You’re not just looking for information that is common knowledge or familiar to your audience; you need to be able to share unique or new information. If not, you’ll just be telling them things they already know, and what’s the point of doing that? It would be like giving a speech on apples with just the most basic facts. You tell your audience apples are a popular edible fruit, Washington State is famous for them, and we use them in many kinds of dishes, including apple pie. All of these points are true, but this won’t surprise (or interest) anybody. But what if, along with this core information, you also shared these delicious facts?
Today, 11 varieties of apples account for 90 percent of apple production in the country and about five types are sold in supermarkets.
In the 1800s, there were 7,100 different varieties of apples grown in the United States.
86 percent of those apple varieties are now extinct.
Extinction matters because “crop diversity” is important to our very survival.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway preserves and safeguards almost 900,000 different seed samples from around the world, including existing apple varieties. This helps to ensure future crop diversity.
Did you just learn something? Even if you didn’t, chances are still pretty good your average audience will. On the surface, talking about apples sounds like a recipe for yawns, but stretching your search can turn up some intriguing and relatable intel that will attract and maintain your audience’s attention.
Step Two: Divide to Conquer
Once you’ve hunted and gathered far too much information for just one speech (or even three), it’s time to divide what you’ve discovered into themed categories. We use categories in this step because it’s something our brain has been doing unconsciously since we were babies. And, quite frankly, if our noggin weren’t so good at processing and sorting incoming data, we’d be in big trouble.
Several studies have looked at how many advertising and marketing messages Americans are exposed to on a daily basis. Based on what constituted as a message or “exposure,” researchers say we’re being bombarded by 5,000 messages a day through every medium imaginable including TV, Internet, billboards, store signs, and radio. That’s a marked increase from the 1970s, when urbanites were absorbing 500 every day.1 With this dramatic increase, why haven’t humans gone totally bonkers?
The answer is that our mind is amazing at categorizing everything from sounds to objects. This natural function allows us to navigate the world. Every time we encounter something, we look for what is new, what might be different, and perhaps what has evolved. We make decisions based on the information already stored in our categories and then we update categories based on what we learn.2
For instance, as a small child, the first time you heard a smoke detector go off, it might have shocked the hair off your head. Not only was it loud and scary, you weren’t sure what it meant for you. Run? Hide? Play dead? Your mind instantly went through thousands of categories to see if this new noise correlated with anything you’d encountered before. No, it wasn’t the toilet flushing. It wasn’t the sound of your mom’s voice, either. It sounded a little like your older brother’s alarm clock, but that wasn’t a perfect match. Once you learned that it was a smoke detector, you took in this new information and put this new sound and its associations into a category. So, the next time a smoke detector went off, your brain accessed that category, interpreted it, and made an informed decision on what you should do next. As humans, collecting categories allows us to save an enormous amount of time and energy.
So let’s put this extraordinary natural inventory system to work. By now you have a general idea of the kind and types of information you’ve gathered. In fact, your brain has already made some observations, identified patterns, and probably sorted some of the information already. Now, it’s time to do this classification intentionally.
What are some of the major themes emerging from your research? Don’t worry if you move things around or change your categories a few times. It’s part of the process. Experiment a little. Whether you keep everything in separate digital files or go old school with paper piles, just make sure your system allows for flexibility. The number of categories you create depends on how broad or specific you want to make them.
Whereas you might separate your research into two categories, another person might want to create more specific ones. For example, pretend you’re preparing a class speech on Canada from the information you’ve found. You divide your categories into:
1. Historical Canada
2. Modern Canada
Using the same information, another person might divide her categories this way:
1. Pre-Colonization and First Nation Peoples
2. Colonization by England
3. Colonization by France
4. Canada and the American Revolution
5. The Confederation
6. Wars
7. The Canada and Constitution Acts
8. Geography
9. Official Languages
10. Government
11. Food
12. Traditions
13. Olympic History
14. Business and Economy
15. Currency
16. Official Symbols
17. Nicknames and Stereotypes
If you’re giving a speech honoring an individual, the same process applies. Say you’ve been asked to speak at your great-grandfather’s 100th birthday. After hunting and gathering, you decide to create the following categories:
1. Childhood
2. Funny Stories
3. Military Service
4. Marriage
5. Family Fishing Trips
6. Best Advice He’s Given Each Grandchild
7. Building the Cabin
8. Starting the Family Business
9. How Much Things Cost 100 Years Ago (gas, a loaf of bread, house, etc.)
Whether you have two categories or 200, the important thing is they work for you, not the other way around. You need to keep track of a lot of information and the faster you can locate it, the more time and effort you save. Our advice is you err on the side of more categories than less, and you’ll see why when we get to Step Three.
Step Three: The Shape of Things to Come
Now it’s time to step back and take a look at what you have. If the answer is “a lot,” that’s a good thing. But, obviously, you need to make some decisions about what goes in your speech and what won’t. You need to start shaping your message. What do you want to say? How do you want to say it? These five questions will help you shape up fast.
What information must absolutely go in the speech?
This includes basic facts the audience will need to know to understand your topic or what they will expect you to share. For example, in the speech on Canada, it would be necessary to say where this country is located in relation to where the audience lives. Or, if you were feting your great-grandpa, you would need to give his current age (100) and other basic facts about his life.
What information is most unique, funny, or surprising?
This is information that is not common knowledge to your audience, but also interesting. For instance, you might say that most Americans might not realize that Canada has a monarchy, a family who is even known to wear crowns and robes once in a while. Or, if it’s about great-grandpa, you’ll probably hear a lot of interesting anecdotes or discover a lot about him that you and most of the family didn’t know. So, if he once caught a whopper of a trout and found a gold watch inside its stomach, that’s a good story. But if it was actually a watch he had lost five years before, that’s even better. Whatever it is, stories of this kind really make speeches memorable.
What information is most relevant to this audience and occasion?
This is the question that brings your topic “home” for the audience. It’s the WIFM (what’s in it for me?) question, or in this case, what’s in it for the audience? Why should they listen or care about your topic? In your speech on Canada, when speaking to an American audience, you might give examples of how Canadians have helped Americans when they needed it most. For instance, Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador in Iran, hid a group of Americans in his home during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, a story retold in the Oscar-winning film Argo. Or, on September 11, 2001, after the United States closed its airspace, Canada welcomed 239 U.S.–bound flights with 33,000 passengers at 17 airports. Then, entire communities fed and housed those passengers for days and even weeks until they could safely travel to the United States.
For great-grandpa, it would be important to acknowledge the family. How many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren does he have?
What overall message do you want to convey in this speech?
This is the primary point of your speech. It’s the essence of what you want to say about the topic. Looking at the speech on Canada, maybe it’s to point out to the audience that Americans should know more about our greatest ally and neighbor to the north.
For your great-grandpa’s speech, it might be to celebrate a humble man who has made a big, positive, and lasting impact on the world.
How do you want the audience to feel about your topic after you’re finished speaking?
This question might sound a bit like the previous one, but it’s not. The previous question has to do with what you want to say; this question is what you want your audience to feel. A feeling is an emotional quality and gives you some direction on how you might create and manage your speech’s tone to achieve the desired feeling. That being said, you want to make sure they complement each other. In the case of the speech on Canada, the goal is to encourage this audience to know more about their neighboring country. So you might start out your speech by testing the audience’s knowledge, proving the point that typical American audiences know very little about Canada. Then, you toss in a few unique facts like Canada’s monarchy. And by the way, the Queen of Canada is Queen Elizabeth II, who also independently reigns in England. Your final remarks might highlight how a Canadian crowd recently finished “The Star-Spangled Banner” when the guest singer’s mic went out, showing how Canadians know our national anthem, but we probably don’t know theirs. And, they’re cool enough to sing it. Finally, you might close with the story about how Canadians rescued thousands of Americans on 9/11. In this format, you’ve set different tones throughout. It’s a roller coaster of emotion, but that’s good. If done well, you will have accomplished your goal.
For great-grandpa’s speech, it would be important to blend humor with touching moments that highlight how humble he is, while sharing how he has made the world a better place for his family and community. Perhaps he served in World War II, but he never talked about it. But then your aunt was going through some old boxes in the attic and discovered he’d won a Bronze Star, something the family and not even his wife knew about. That is pretty typical of that generation of warriors. They did their job and didn’t brag about it. On his 100th birthday, it’s time to brag on his behalf. The fact that he’s never talked about it shows how humble he is, but earning it shows that he served his country and helped bring an immoral dictator to his knees. After the war, he came home, packed up the Bronze Star in a box, and opened a small grocery store. In your research, perhaps you discovered that for more than 40 years he secretly gave groceries on credit to families when they fell on hard times. He did this quietly, without fanfare, and sometimes at a loss to his own business. It’s time to tell that story. Again, the “humble helper” theme is illuminated in this powerful tale.
Now it’s your turn. Hopefully, we’ve given you some sparks to fire up your own ideas. Go back and start at the first question. Then take some time to carefully answer all the questions. Take notes as you go. Don’t spend too much time thinking or planning ahead. Your only job right now is to tackle these questions as specifically as possible. Remember to refer to your categories regularly. You might even go back and review an article, statistic, or video to refresh your memory.
Step Four: Write Your Headline
The next time you surf the Web, take a look at how many headlines populate the Websites you visit. From search engines to CNN, they are everywhere. All these headlines could be overwhelming, but usually not. As we already learned, your mind is constantly categorizing headlines and making decisions based on your past experiences. Journalists and editors realize this on some level and understand that creating hot headlines is vital to generating traffic and engaging readers.
We want you to write a headline for your speech. A headline in a speech is often called a thesis statement. Just like a news headline, it’s short, it’s direct, and tells the audience the focus of your topic. Unlike news headlines, written after the article is finished, we write the headline before the speech is composed. This is because a speech headline serves a dual purpose. Yes, we use it in the speech to tell the audience the purpose of your speech, but it also tells you the focus of your speech. This is a terrific way to stay on track when you’re putting it together.
Step Three helped you begin to zero in on what you want to talk about or the message you want to share. But it’s probably still a bit of a jumble, so we need to prune and polish it. To show you how this is done, we’re going to help our friend Michelle, who’s giving a speech on French cooking for a community center’s “International Day.”
Michelle has spent quite a bit of time on Step One, and she’s hunted and gathered a bunch of information. It’s far too much for the 15 minutes she’s been allotted for her speech. When we meet, she’s also completed Step Two by conquering her information and dividing it into 11 categories. They are:
1. French holidays.
2. French films about food.
3. Famous French chefs.
4. French wine.
5. French food.
6. History of French cooking.
7. French table settings.
8. French cooking around the world.
9. Julia Child’s impact on French cooking.
10. French cookery books.
11. French cooking schools.
We’re also happy to learn that she’s taken a couple of days to answer those five questions in Step Three. Here are some of the notes she took:
Well, there seems to be a theme about being intimidated by French cooking. Julia Child was the first to really bring it into average homes through television, but ordering in restaurants might still pose a challenge for some. My goal is to give the audience enough information so they won’t be intimidated when ordering in a fancy French restaurant. In other words, they’ll know what to expect.
• I must cover some basic info on French dining.
• My speech is about French cooking—must talk about food!
• Julia Child demystified French cooking for Americans (relevant to this American audience, well-known personality).
• I want the audience to have an understanding of classic French courses so they can order in a fancy restaurant without being embarrassed.
Michelle has done so much preliminary work; we’re able to start crafting her headline right away. Using the notes she brought with her, Michelle wrote a headline that we all agreed was a good start. It narrowed the purpose of her speech to a few short lines:
“Today, I will tell you about how various French dining courses work so that you will want to try French food, and continuing in the tradition of the great Julia Child who popularized French cooking in America, you won’t be scared the next time you go to a fancy French restaurant because you’re not sure how to order.”
However, Michelle didn’t write out loud. When she tries to say it out loud, she realizes it is really word-heavy, and clunky, and has several different thoughts crammed into one sentence. She also used the word French four times in one sentence. It’s time to get out the pruning shears. We ask her if she’s decided on the purpose of the speech. She tells us that it’s really about people being less scared to try fine French dining. So, we suggest that she reorder her two main ideas, putting the “scare” first and “learning” second. Switching these two thoughts automatically makes her headline more audience-centered and states her purpose first. The emphasis is now on helping the audience by teaching them what they need to know.
Here’s what Michelle comes up with next:
“Today, I want to take the intimidation out of fine French dining by introducing you to the various courses that make up a classic French meal.”
It sounds pretty good to us, and she had really pruned wordiness. She’s also correct to take out the mention of Julia Child. There wasn’t any need to mention Child because the speech isn’t about this famous American chef; it’s on French dining. Michelle will still talk about Child in her speech, of course. Now that the clutter is removed from the headline, we can see another opportunity to prune. This is Michelle’s final headline:
“Today, I want to take the intimidation out of fine French dining.”
What happened to the “various courses” line? Michelle decided her purpose is really to take the intimidation out of fine French dining. She’s going to do so by introducing the courses. And though she’ll probably spend more time speaking about the courses, the purpose of doing so is to make fine French dining less scary.
There’s a great reason to be really strict with your headline. The more focused your headline, the easier it will be to organize and stay on track while you’re writing your speech. One of the many benefits (and we’ll share others later) of a tightly written headline is that it tells you exactly what information to include in your speech, and what information (even if super interesting) doesn’t fit.
Step Five: Crowd Control
Now that you have your headline, go back and take a look at all of your categories. Using your headline as a guide, separate the categories that apply from those that don’t. Be tough. You’re only interested in categories that will help support your headline. Set aside everything else. If you’re unsure about a category, keep it in the mix until you can figure out if it works or not.
The goal here is to cut your categories down significantly. By significantly, we mean wean them down to two or three. Yes, we’re serious. If you have to consolidate categories, do so, but clean out any information you can’t use to make it easier for you to access later.
What does this look like in practice? Let’s go back to Michelle’s French cooking speech. She had 11 categories to start. And here’s her headline:
“Today, I want to take the intimidation out of fine French dining.”
First, we eliminate categories that do not directly support this headline. Let’s cross them out.
1. French holidays.
2. French films about food
3. Famous French chefs
4. French wine
5. French food
6. History of French cooking
7. French table settings
8. French cooking around the world
9. Julia Child’s impact on French cooking
10. French cookery books
11. French cooking schools
Our new list looks like this:
2. French food
3. History of French cooking
4. French table settings
5. Julia Child’s impact on French cooking
Then, let’s combine similar categories to create two new ones:
1. The French dining experience
2. Classic French meal courses
These two remaining categories (at the most, three) are going to be your main points. So you’ve got your headline and main points. Now it’s time to organize and outline.
Step Six: Heart of the Parts
How many types of speeches can you think of? There are hundreds, but all speeches have the same basic structure: a beginning, middle, and end. It’s a format you know very well because every good story has the same structure. TV shows, films, books, articles, fables, and even stories you tell your friends have this three-point structure. All three must be there or it doesn’t work. Imagine reading a fantastic book, one you’re really into, and two-thirds of the way in, you find out someone has ripped out the remaining chapters. Do you just shrug and forget about it because you’re content with just reading some of the book? We’re guessing not so much. Our brain needs all three to complete a story.
A speech outline also has all three of these parts, but we use different names for them. We call the beginning the introduction, the middle is called the body, and the end is called the conclusion. You know this terminology if you’ve ever had to outline a paper in school. We’re going to take you through a basic speech outline and show how you can use it to build your speech. This format will work in most cases, but you might have to tailor it to fit your particular speech. If you’ve done the previous steps, you should be able to follow this outline from top to bottom and start filling in information next to each bullet point. We don’t want to say it’s as easy as “fill in the blank,” but it’s close. Use complete sentences, but write out loud. Remember: Always write your speech to be said, not read.
Introduction
Write down your headline.
Write down your first main point.
Write down your second main point.
Body
Write down your first main point.
Write down your second main point.
Conclusion
Write down your headline.
Write down your first main point.
Write down your second main point.
You might be looking at this and thinking, “Why in the heck did I just write the same thing over and over again?” It’s because in the introduction you preview your main points. You don’t elaborate; you just share with us how you’re going to support your headline by telling the audience what your two main points will be. In the body, elaborate on your main points, and in the conclusion restate your headline and recap your two main points. This might seem like overkill, but it will hold a nice structure for your speech and help your audience follow along.
Moving on, we’re going to add a few more bullets to the outline. The first bullet is called topic overview. In this section, you give us a snapshot of the topic on a broad scale; it leads into your headline, but it’s not the headline itself. One of the easiest ways to write this section is to go back to Step Three and refer to the notes you took when you answered the five questions.
The second bullet is often called a personal credibility statement. We’re going to call it a personal or professional connection. It’s a few sentences telling the audience why you care about this topic, or what makes you the expert on it. For example, if you are doing a speech on breast cancer, and you have a personal connection to the disease, you might want to share it here. Or, maybe you’re a cancer researcher or medical professional. Again, this is where that kind of information goes.
You’ll notice, we’ve also added sub-points below each of your main points. As you write, you’ll decide what is the best information to include in these sub-points to support your main points. Creating bullets also reminds you to give your main points equal time and emphasis. Along with sub-points, we’ve added bullets to mark where you’ll need transitional sentences. These sentences help your audience know, “Hey, we’re leaving this section and moving on to the next.” A common transitional sentence sounds similar to this: “Now that we’ve taken a look at XYZ, let’s turn our attention to ABC.” It’s a linking device that bridges one idea to another.
Introduction
Write down your topic overview.
Your headline.
Write down your connection.
Write down your transitional sentence.
Your first main point.
Write down your transitional sentence.
Your second main point.
Write down your transitional sentence.
Body
Your first main point.
Write down your sub-point #1.
Write down your sub-point #2.
Write down your transitional sentence.
Your second main point.
Write down your sub-point #1.
Write down your sub-point #2.
Write down your transitional sentence.
Conclusion
Your headline.
Your first main point.
Your second main point.
Now it’s time to book-end your speech. Our hard and fast rule is always use an attention-getter. Never, ever start your speech out by telling us what your speech is about. A sentence like, “My speech is about” or “I’m going to give a speech on…” should never start a speech. Ever. We’ve mentioned this before, but we can’t emphasize it enough. It is akin to revealing the punch line before delivering the joke. So what is an attention-getter? Well, that’s easy: It’s something that grabs an audience’s attention and makes us want to hear a lot more. Attention-getters should relate to your topic and be relatively brief. It’s the flirting we discussed in Chapter 5.
Great examples of attention-getters can be funny or serious stories, quotes from important people, a few lines from a poem or song, and even a strange sound. Asking a question to involve the audience is a good way to engage them, but be careful it doesn’t turn into a question and answer session. For example, you can start your speech by asking, “How many of you can use an extra $1,000 a month?”
Your attention-getter is one bookend to your speech; the other is what we call the “Big Bang!” This is the last thing you say in your speech. Too often we’ve heard speakers who don’t plan an ending. But the ending is what people tend to remember. Good or bad, it leaves a lasting impression. So what kind of impression will you leave your audience with? Your Big Bang! can use the same kind of engagement devices as you use for an attention-getter, but almost everyone gets stuck coming up with a new, relevant one. The good news is that there is a hack for this. Use your attention-getter as the basis for your Big Bang! However you started your attention-getter, finish it in the Big Bang! You don’t have to do this literally, but if you refer to it in some way, you will put a natural button on your entire speech. For example, you can end your speech by saying, “Now that you know how you can increase your income by $1,000 a month, you can start dreaming about how you’re going to spend it.”
We also strongly suggest that you practice your attention-getter and Big Bang! a lot. You should absolutely memorize them. Remember: First and last impressions last longer than anything else in a speech. And if you’re looking down and fumbling, reading off an index card or sheet of paper, it dramatically reduces the impact of these critical moments.
Introduction
Write down your attention-getter.
Your topic overview.
Your headline.
Your connection.
Your transitional sentence.
Your first main point.
Your transitional sentence.
Your second main point.
Your transitional sentence.
Body
Your first main point.
Your sub-point #1.
Your sub-point #2.
Your transitional sentence.
Your sub-point #1.
Your sub-point #2.
Your transitional sentence.
Conclusion
Your headline.
Your first main point.
Your second main point.
Write down your Big Bang!
Once you’ve completed your outline, it shouldn’t be your final draft. You can now write out a manuscript or keep revising the outline. Just remember to always write out loud.
Step Seven: Stand and Deliver
We’re going to be very clear here: You can’t over-practice. It’s impossible. And we guarantee that when you sit down from delivering your speech, or during the car ride home, you will wish you had practiced at least once more, if not a million. Most people practice just a fraction of the time necessary. It’s shocking when we hear people say they only practiced their speech a couple of times or just in the car on the way to give it.
Sometimes people will ask us how many times they should practice a speech. There’s no definitive answer for this, but if pressed for an actual number, we’ll tell them at least 25 times. They are blown away. Then we add that that’s just the start. And they have to do it standing up as if they are actually giving it to a real audience. The rest of the time can be in the car, in the shower, or any free second they have. Many people are really put off by this news and usually groan audibly, before reverting back to their original plan of just running it through in their heads a couple of times and then maybe in front of their dog. These are the same people who whine about being “nervous” and are the first to tell you and everyone else that they are “terrible speakers.” Yet, they can’t be bothered to practice or do something to fix it.
What’s the rationale to set oneself up for failure? Is it so they can say, “Well, that proves I’m a terrible speaker”? Or is it because they fear they will practice and still not do well? The fact is that you will always do better if you practice, so there is zero chance of winning that argument. You only lose by not practicing. Period.
We realize that for different reasons, everyone cannot practice as much as we believe is necessary, so we took this into account with our write out loud approach. The good news for you is you’ve been practicing all along. Your advantage right now is time. However, this doesn’t mean you’re finished and it’s suddenly cocktail hour. Nice try. You now kick it into high gear and bring home the gold.
Here are our best practicing practices:
Stretch out your body before every practice, especially neck and shoulders.
Warm up your mouth before every practice, no exceptions. Use our Straight From the Horse’s Mouth trick in Chapter 7.
Stand up and practice out loud as often as possible.
Practice as if you’re giving the speech to an audience.
Practice in front of a mirror several times to see your facial expressions and gestures.
If possible, check out the room you’ll be speaking in, walk around, and get the feel for it.
Understand every single word and be able to pronounce everything correctly.
Tape yourself (audio/video). This is a scary but necessary experience.
Run your entire speech in bed, right before you shut your eyes, and when you wake up, run through as much of it as you remember.
Time yourself! Make sure you’re within the time limit and consistent.
Practice without words to work out your gestures. Memorize and understand every single word and phrase.
Memorize the attention-getter and Big Bang!
Practice with your visual aids.
Visualize success.
Eliminate all negative self-talk during all practices, no exceptions!
Shut down your inner critic during all practices, no exceptions!
Practice every single day, multiple times, if possible.
Make Your Notes Noteworthy
Memorized speeches are always best. They free you up to live in the moment. You can gesture more easily and make real contact. It also shows you have taken the occasion and this audience seriously. The second best strategy is to speak extemporaneously. This basically means you have notes with you, but only refer to them periodically. It does not mean that you will be speaking off-the-cuff or making it up as you go. When you speak extemporaneously, you know the basic elements of your speech very well. You have worked out the sentence structure. Your notes are there to keep you on track, not for you to be tied to them.
Barring memorization, you should use note cards, a manuscript, or an outline. But never ever use an electronic device like a smartphone or tablet. Ever. There is too much room for error. There are countless reasons for this, but the big one is they aren’t meant for speeches.
A young woman who read off her smartphone delivered one of the worst speeches we ever heard. The speech itself was fine, but her delivery was disastrous. She looked down the entire time and scrolled. She would often scroll too far and then have to scroll back. The font was tiny, so she held the screen very close to her face, which covered it during the entire speech. If this weren’t bad enough, about halfway through her speech, she started getting text messages. And she actually answered one of them! Talk about distracting for everyone involved.
So, again, our suggestions are old-fashioned note cards, a manuscript, or outline. Whatever you choose, remember this tool is for you, not for your audience. In other words, make it you-ser friendly. If you’re using a manuscript or outline, use GIGANTIC font, and double space. We’re not kidding. It’s because when you get up in front of the room, magically, that 12-point font will shrink to 8, and your single-spaced sentences will suddenly look like a giant blob. Okay, it’s not magic; it’s nerves that make things go wonky on the page. The same goes for note cards: Write big.
Another word of advice: Don’t worry about it being neat and tidy. This is your tool, so make notes on it, highlight or underline key words or phrases, draw a smiley face, or do whatever will help you.
In our classes, new students are often afraid to turn in the notes they used for their speeches. It’s usually because the pages or note cards are covered in writing or have words crossed out, or the pages are crumpled a bit. What they don’t understand is that we love to see these markings. The personal “coding” on their notes mean a student has lived with the document, practiced with it, and used it as a tool to get the job done. A tool is only helpful if it’s used. Think about garden tools. If a shovel is shiny and unmarked, it means it hasn’t been used. But you can always spot the tools a gardener finds the most helpful, because they look like they’ve been through World War III.
Visual Aids Should Be Visual and Aid
On some occasions, you’ll want to use visual aids. Here are our top tips for using them:
Avoid using the whiteboard or chalkboard.
Prepare visual aids in advance.
Practice with your visual aids.
Make sure your visual aids are big enough for all to see.
Display visual aids where the entire audience can see them.
Do not stand in front of visual aids.
Avoid passing visual aids among the audience.
Do not give a handout to your audience while you are speaking.
Display visual aids only while discussing them.
Talk to your audience, not to your visual aids.
Explain visual aids clearly and concisely.
Use your aid during the speech, not after.
If possible, use a professional slide program like Prezi or PowerPoint.
Most importantly, your visual aids are there to support your speech, not distract from it, replace your delivery, or otherwise diminish your own performance.
Keep Calm and Speak On
Okay, we wouldn’t be the least surprised if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed at this point. It’s a lot to take in. We tossed a ton of new terminology and theory at you. Then, we turned everything most people believe about public speaking upside down—all of it, just to get to this point where we put it all together. So, if you were considering taking a break until the day before your speech, we wouldn’t blame you. But we wouldn’t recommend it either.
You can’t cram for a speech. There are too many moving parts, and each of them needs to be fine-tuned and then connected with each other. And in public speaking, like in many other things in life, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.
If you do decide to put off planning, preparing, and practicing until the very last minute, it is guaranteed not to be as good as if you work on it, even a little, over a longer period of time. Moreover, if you don’t do nearly as well as you had hoped, your poor showing will falsely reinforce a belief that you’re a bad speaker. But it’s not because you’re a bad speaker, it’s because you didn’t invest the time in yourself or your speech to be able to do your best.
Do yourself a favor and fight to be better. First, turn off the inner critic.
Remember your inner critic can be one tricky character, using both sour and sweet nothings to convince you to procrastinate. She could be saying to you right now that you are too stressed out to get started. Or he could sound very reasonable, even complimentary. If you’re saying to yourself, “I work best on deadlines, so waiting is actually better for me,” that’s just sweet talk to slow you down. And just so you know, he’ll be the same guy berating you when you’re totally unhinged, because you’ve waited until the last minute. With the inner critic, there’s just no winning.
Now that we’ve settled that, it’s Go Time!
Key Notes
1. Step One: Find out as much unique and new information about your topic as you can.
2. Step Two: Break this information down into categories.
3. Step Three: Begin shaping your speech by placing each category in order of importance.
4. Step Four: Write a headline for your speech to focus you on the information that needs to be included.
5. Step Five: Go back to your categories and cut out the ones that don’t apply.
6. Step Six: Outline your speech’s introduction, body, and conclusion.