Your Speech

I'm amazed how many public speakers are not familiar with their own speeches. They recite the speech like a stranger to it, lose themselves in the delivery and seem surprised by each subsequent line.

Without a great familiarity with their speech, a speechmaker is putting themselves at a significant risk of failure. They will not be at ease, will not be

Techniques to Your speech include:

• Reading and re-reading the speech
• Recording the speech on mp3 and listening to it while mobile
• Recounting the speech from memory

The goal is not to learn your speech word-for-word. It will seem mechanical and deliberate. Besides, where's the fun in that?

Instead, find the story of your speech. The outer outline of your speech is a great place to start. If you can remember the flow of your speech, its story, from start to finish, then you're in a great place! It is very, very unlikely that you will lose yourself when making your speech and you will be very comfortable during your delivery. After all, your speech is now an old friend.

Preparing to make a speech

From afar, public speaking is a daunting task, a journey into the unknown for the novice public speaker. However with adequate preparation, the art of delivering a speech becomes a much easier task.

In this section we take a large imposing task and breaking it into a small number of very manageable tasks. In this section you will learn how to familiarize yourself with my Four Corners of Speechmaking:

• Your speech
• Your audience
• The public speaking venue
• Yourself, the novice public speaker.

By tackling each of these, you will overcome the source of your worst fears.

In the subsequent section, you will learn some tips and techniques that will add the final polish to your public speaking abilities.

Draft your speech

It is now time to add flesh to your outline and create a first draft of the speech. Before we start, note that a draft is just that, a first-cut at your speech. Your first draft of a speech should never, ever be the final draft.

The outline we created in the last step will serve as the basis for our first draft. We take each element of the outline and apply our creative writing juices to turn that outline into a portion of a speech.

There is no right or wrong way to move from outline to draft. Be yourself, use your own voice and remember, you can change anything and everything you write later. For now it's just important to establish that first draft.

Let's take some examples from the outline in the last step.

The conversion from outline to draft can be simple, exchanging an outline element for a speech sentence...

Outline:

• Introduce myself

Speech draft

"As my perspiring brow and nervous demeanor might suggest, I am honored to introduce myself as the Best Man for today's wonderful occasion. I will not be speaking for long today because of a throat problem. John says he will cut it if I bring up any embarrassing stories about him."

... or more likely the process is less direct and more creative...

Outline:

• Pay tribute to key participants
  • Compliment & raise toast to the bride
  • Thank & compliment the bridesmaids
  • Pay tribute to parents of bride and groom

Speech draft

"I know it is a cliché but I would just like to comment on how stunning Sarah looks today, she is beautiful, John is a very lucky man. And without further ado I would like to raise a toast for Sarah. <toast>

"As is traditional in any wedding I would like to complement the Bridesmaids on their help with the wedding, particularly for managing to get Sarah to the church today. It's amazing what a pair of handcuffs can do. The Bridesmaids look beautiful, outdone only by our stunning bride.

"I would like to pay special tribute to John and Sarah's parents. They have helped make this a very special day. Can I also say how beautiful both mom's look, they are simply divine."

Once you have finished your first draft of the speech, it's time to take a rest. Put the speech down and forget about it for a day or two. First, you need a rest. But second, your critical eyes will function much better in the cold light of day. You will be amazed at how much your speech will improve when you go from first to second to third draft - but only if you leave time between each draft.

There is no scientific way to know when you have reached your speech's final draft, but here is a good indication: If you find yourself broadly happy with the speech and find yourself making minor changes from draft to draft, it's time to stop.

Create a speech outline

Outlining is a popular pre-draft technique when writing and it is one I commonly recommend to aspiring speechwriters.

An outline is a hierarchical representation of the content of your speech. Think of it as the skeleton upon which you will add the flesh of your speech.

Let's take a Best Man Speech as an example. Start your outline at its very simplest:

• Opening
• Body
• Closing

That was easy. It gets a little trickier though. The next step is try to flesh out some additional points, using the notes you have about the occasion, the theme, the subject and other information you have gathered from people relevant to the speech (family, friends and colleagues of the subject of the speech, other speechmakers etc.).

• Opening
  • Introduce myself
• Body
  • Pay tribute to key participants
  • Recount how I became friends with groom
  • Describe some of the groom's best traits - with humor
  • Words of advice to Groom from a married man
• Closing
  • Ask the audience to be upstanding
  • Raise a toast to the bride and groom

For the first time, a speech is taking shape! Your speech will take further shape as you take each element of your outline and, where appropriate, you add more additional outlines.

Let's take the element Pay tribute to key participants above. The next level of outline might look like:

• Pay tribute to key participants
  • Compliment & raise toast to the bride
  • Thank & compliment the bridesmaids
  • Pay tribute to parents of bride and groom

Continue to iterate through your outline until you feel you have captured the essence of your speech. Be sure not to mistake the outline for the speech itself. That's the next step. For now, be happy to achieve a great framework that will guide you as you write your speech

Speech Structure - How to organize your speech

Most good writing, we are told, must have structure. A good speech is no exception. By providing your speech with a beginning, a middle, and an end, you will lay the foundations for a successful speech that fulfills all of your aspirations.

Opening

The first thirty seconds of your speech are probably the most important. In that period of time you must grab the attention of the audience, and engage their interest in what you have to say in your speech. This can be achieved in several ways. For example you could raise a thought-provoking question, make an interesting or controversial statement, recite a relevant quotation or even recount a joke. Once you have won the attention of the audience, your speech should move seamlessly to the middle of your speech.

Body

The body of your speech will always be the largest part of your speech. At this point your audience will have been introduced to you and the subject of your speech (as set out in your opening) and will hopefully be ready to hear your arguments, your thoughts or even your ramblings on the subject of your speech.

The best way to set out the body of your speech is by formulating a series of points that you would like to raise. In the context of your speech, a "point" could be a statement about a product, a joke about the bridegroom or a fond memory of the subject of a eulogy.

The points should be organized so that related points follow one another so that each point builds upon the previous one. This will also give your speech a more logical progression, and make the job of the listener a far easier one.

Don't try to overwhelm your audience with countless points. It is better to make a small number of points well than to have too many points, none of which are made satisfactorily.

Closing

Like your Opening, the Closing of your speech must contain some of your strongest material. You should view the closing of your speech as an opportunity. It is an opportunity to:

• – Summarize the main points of your speech
• – Provide some further food for thought for your listeners
• – Leave your audience with positive memories of your speech
• – End with a final thought/emotion (e.g. With well wishes to the Bride and Groom, With fond memories of a departed friend, With admiration for winners and losers at an awards ceremony).