How to Prepare Your Speech

After several appearances, you feel more at ease standing before an audience. That fluttery feeling is less acute. You think of your efforts in terms of a talk. You realize that public speaking is the same as conversation only amplified. You now express your ideas with a better selection of words; you are learning that by practicing good speaking in ordinary conversation, you improve your public speaking as well. You are improving your grammar and speaking in more complete sentences because you think of what you are going to say before you say it. Thus you are learning to think on your feet-thereby eliminating “ahs” and “ers” and hesitant talk.

Speeches-’Telling” or “Selling”

When you make a speech, either you are selling something or telling something. If you are “selling,” satisfy yourself completely that you thoroughly understand your course (or your cause) and believe in it wholeheartedly. If you are “telling,” put yourself into the scene. You’ll make it more interesting that way. Whatever you sell or tell, make it sound simple and natural. When you try to talk over your head, gremlins of doubt crop out.

A scene or a theme simply and naturally told, carries conviction.

An oft-cited railroad crossing case brought this out: Back in the early days, railroads would send a young lawyer out to try a routine matter, and he would have only time to read the claim agent’s report-with no opportunity to talk to his witnesses.

In this particular instance the crossing flagman was an elderly Negro named Mose. After a few preliminary questions developing the identity of the witness, he was asked to tell the jury about the incident in his own way. Slowly and deliberately, Old Mose stated that it was a dark and stormy night.

“I looked outa the winda o’ my li’l ole hut and I seed that great big light on number nine engine a-comin’ down the track; then I seed out the other winda, two lil ole lights on that there car, so I grabbed me my lantern and runned out in the middle of the crossin’.

“I jes’ waved an’ waved my lantern, but that there great big light kept a-comin’ up the track and the lights on thet li’l ole Ford kept a-comin’ down the road. They met and the car got the worse of it-tha’s all there was to it.”

The jury returned a verdict for the railroad and court adjourned but Mose kept hanging around. The railroad attorney told him that he’d made a fine witness and Mose replied, “Well, Boss, I jes’ tried to tell the truth, but I was scared to God thet lawyer-man would ask me was my lantern lit!” A speech is useless when it merely tells of some person, place or thing, without showing some reason for doing so. A speech by way of being informative about the “good old days,” might be loaded with vivid accounts of way-back-when, yet the audience might well think “So what?” This is particularly true if the things described are as unrelated as a potpourri of paint splotches on a palette.

On the other hand, when a speech paints a glowing word picture of our wonderful past and adds touches of color concerning today’s comforts, the comparison is interesting. When the speaker suggests an aura around the good old days but adds a persuasive bit about today being better, his subject shows signs of life. The following five sketches illustrate how strictly informative subjects progress in interest when comparison is added, and when argumentative comments are blended into them. The first two of these are informative and have barely a trace of comparison. They’re picturesque perhaps, but they fall a bit flat and the reaction is the “so-what” we referred to above. The third reserves any hint of conflict for the punch line; and the fourth and fifth, commingle a touch of “the other side of the question”-which makes them good material for panel discussions or an interesting speech.

Tags: public speaking

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