Organizing Your Speech

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SPEECH WRITING

Choose a topic, organize, deliver. The last two are ‘joined at the hip’ so must be in your organization.You have a great topic and make your speech, but people start to fidget or yawn. Why? You’ve letyour audience’s attention wander.There are some rules that you follow:

A beginning

must capture the attention,

A middle

must flow logically and be easy to understand, plus

An ending

must emphasise the emotion you want the audience to experience …… laughter, sadness,interest, questioning or determination to do something.First, we laterally think, putting lots of ideas on a page. We then choose which one we will choose asan opener and which, perhaps, as an ending. Try out lots of ideas.

OPENER

Some say “Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you’ve told them.”This is OK for a business lecture but a speech is different. Do we want the audience to know what we are going to tell them or keep their attention by makingthem guess, building up the suspense?If it’s a story, do we want an ending first? eg. “It was all the elephant’s fault ….. but it actually startedwith Rupert refusing to wear his Wellington boots”. This is teasing them to want to listen to decide. Think of a business letter where the rule is to immediately say why you are writing in the first sentencefor clarity.…. “I am writing to complain.” What is the reaction of the reader? A better way is, “I amwriting to compliment you on such a wide range of tasteful, quality goods, but to tell you why I will never buy another thing in your shop”. Now you have the reader’s attention and they want to read on. This iswhat we want in a speech.You must grab the audience’s attention immediately.Idea: Open a little box, keeping the lid up to stop the audience seeing inside. Ask what they think isinside. That is a good beginning but, an extra idea is to have a little torch inside which glows. Amagical extra touch! You have everybody’s attention immediately.Just imagine I go up to a group having coffee. If I say, “I’ve just read a few interesting articles in theScience magazine”, nobody will look up. If you say, “Hey. Do you know that fruit flies have mad,passionate sex every lunchtime”, everybody will look up!!

MIDDLE

A speech is different to a newspaper article or a book. You keep each topic short; you don’t ramble onwith long sentences; you help the listener lead from one topic to another easily. Think of ways of putting your ideas into a logical order. Think of a conversation - one idea or topic reminds you of another, and that leads you to yet another. Cut and paste on your computer till you see a smooth flowof thoughts. (I once watched a film in a little hut in Malawi. People who had been killed suddenly camealive… because the film had two reels, and they put the second reel on the projector first!) Do not goforward in time and then go back. This is OK in a book but it is confusing in a speech.

Now put your ideas into paragraphs. Each paragraph should be around three or four, not more,sentences long. This stops ‘saturation’ of the audience’s brain. Also, for the same reason, cut some of the ideas out and save them for another speech. It is tempting to include all your ideas….. but don’t!!LESS IS BETTER. Try to choose different emotions if you can, to keep the audience ‘on their toes’.An A4 page of Arial 12 font, with paragraphs, is a 7 minute speech. When you practise you should beable to read it in six minutes. The extra minute is for vocal delivery … e.g. Pauses.

MEMORIES

.Laterally think!!Use emotions to trigger ideas …… fear, happiness, interest, regret, pride etc.REGRET: There is a fire and a house is gutted. What do the owners say? “Oh my new television”?OR “Oh no, my memories! The first picture my child painted, photo albums and letters. These areirreplaceable.”EDUCATION: I’m going to say a word and I want you to say the first word that comes into your head.“Red”….. some of you said blue, blood, red traffic light, danger, Christmas paper etc.” Why? This iswhat psychologists use to get inside your head, and examine your memories. Why did I say “My firstparty dress? Because I loved it? No, because I HATED it. It was a ‘pass-me-down’ from mysister……. “INTEREST: This is a picture of a lady posing in an old fashioned bathing costume. It came from mymother’s photo album. It says on the back, “Auntie Jessie in Magaluf….. (exclamation mark,exclamation mark). Now who was Auntie Jessie and what was she doing in Magaluf, we wonder??We’ll never know. My mother died without telling us.MISTAKE: I grew up in a mansion with a huge garden that had a wild, wooded wilderness at thebottom where we could play all sorts of imaginative games, like Cowboys and Indians and hunting lionsin a safari. I went back to visit the other day and found it is a very small house with a ‘postage stamp’lawn and a big, unkempt, overgrown area at the rear… which, obviously, my Dad had fenced off as hedidn’t have time to keep it tidy! Is it a mistake to go back to something, or keep those preciousmemories of childhood days intact?HAPPINESS: A childhood memory such as making rose petal perfume for your mother … and laughter at the awful smell it must have had!UNEXPECTED DELIGHT A visit to Disneyland. Disappointment when finding it is just a theme parkwith plastic birds and flowers. Then, you are mesmerised as everything comes alive, with each itemhaving a different character. Everybody joins in singing, ending with,“Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s out the door wego”. A flower flutters its eyelashes and says, “Goodbye”. You return the greeting and realize you have just said, “Goodbye and Thank You” to a plastic flower!! The magic of Disney - a memory to treasure.Expand on your ideas, writing a few sentences on each point, then précis, précis, précis. This meanscutting out extra, unnecessary words without losing the meaning. Cut out the rambling sentences tokeep your audience with you all the way. Be ruthless! If you need to make it shorter, cut out the sameemotion if you have it in twice. No repetition unless for effect. Check your paragraph lengths.Example of a précis: (Knowledge of vocabulary essential) ‘How to stir fry’. “We first…. etc. etc”. Wecould say..…“We sautéed the julienne vegetables in sizzling butter”. Three important words…….sauté julienne sizzling. The first two say it all, the last is to ‘paint a picture so the listener can see’.

NOW THE IMPORTANT PART

You have the bare bones. You have the basic pattern of the dress.You are not writing a newspaper article where the reader might break off to go and put the kettle on.You MUST keep your audience’s attention. So, now you must brighten it up with sequins and ribbonsto make it interesting. How?

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