A Speech in Three Words?

In this post and the next I will provide you with one method for starting a speech from scratch.  This method is designed to do two things for you.  First, it will require a fraction of the effort required to start writing out a speech word for word and stop when you’ve got everything recorded.  Second, it will take you a long way toward memorizing your speech without the grueling hours of rote memorization.  So what do you have to give up in exchange for these advantages?  You must let go of the idea that your delivery must be word-perfect.  You are not planning to write out and repeat every idea to your audience verbatim.  What you will do to get started is answer two questions.  

The first is “What is my point?”  You should be able to state in a single sentence the thesis of your speech.  It will probably read something like “I want to persuade my listeners to vote for me” or “I need to explain the company’s new vacation policy”.

The second question is “What information do my listeners need?”  Create several short sentences that will answer a question like “How do you do that?” or “How can you prove that?” and arrange them in the order you will present them.  Read all the notes over several times, and pick out one or two keywords from each point.  You might find that you can actually sum up the points of your speech with one sentence for your main point and a pair of words for each of your subpoints.  

When you have broken your work down into these bare-bones elements you will see how easy it is to memorize the form of your speech compared to memorizing a five-minute speech word for word.  Even if you weren’t able to shorten your subpoints to keywords you won’t have much trouble remembering the thrust of four or five sentences.  Once you are able to rattle these off in order without a lot of fumbling you are ready for the next steps, which will be described in my next post.

For now, get started on this stage, and you will lose a lot of your fear of speaking.