When you give a speech, you stand up straight, speak clearly, and have fantastic eye contact. What more could you want? How about a memorable and magical speech…
Do your homework
If you want to create a speech that does the two hardest things any speaker can attempt, inspire and motivate your audience, then you’ll need to write a great speech. That speech will only be as good as what you can put into it. This means that you have some homework to do.
If you wait until you’re sitting down to create your next speech to start gathering the information you’ll need to make a great speech, then it may already be too late. The really good speechwriters are always gathering information. They read everything they can get their hands on and those items that catch their eye are filed away somewhere they can find them when they finally need them.
Your end goal should have more information you’ve gathered for your speech than you could possibly use. This will allow you to sort through everything and select only the best parts to use.
Magic speeches start one word at a time
The interesting thing about writing speeches is that too often we are our own worst enemies. We all know what a great speech sounds like, and while creating a speech, we quickly realize that our first draft basically sounds pretty bad. If you’re not careful, you can get stuck in an almost endless editing loop where you try to come up with a perfect sentence before writing the next one.
Do not do this. Instead, let the words flow as you create your first step of the speech. One way to ensure that your speech can grab and hold your audience’s attention is to identify 6 or more main points that will grab attention and have a good story associated with them.
As you practice your speech, what you’re going to be hearing is the “rhythm” that your speech has: it has a lot to do with the rhythm of the speech and how it all ties together.
It’s about the ears
I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent in the past working on getting my PowerPoint slides perfect. Turns out what he should have been doing. Your audience won’t really remember what your slides looked like after your speech is over. Instead, it is your words that will stay with them if you choose them correctly.
If you take the time to ensure that your words are used to paint a sequence of mental images in your audience’s head, then you’ve found a way to make a lasting impression. An important note here is that we write differently than we speak: we use more slang and contractions when we speak. If you write your speech and then read it the way you wrote it, it won’t come across as a natural way to speak.
What all this means to you
Finding a way to cast a magic spell on your audience is what every speaker wants to find a way to do. Creating a great speech is one way to make this happen.
The way to do this is to get inside your audience’s head as you write your next speech. Once you do this, you’ll understand that your audience doesn’t really want to know how smart you are (what can they do with it?), they really want to know what they can do with the information. that you share with them during your speech…
