Preparing the Principal Speech

You are now ready to prepare a principal speech-the biggest problem for public speakers. Bill Shakespeare, the best bard in the business, put actors in their place when he said, “The play is the thing”.
Similarly when speakers are put on a common conversational basis, the speech is the thing not the speaker.

What Do You Want to Talk About?

Your choice of a subject is of course bounded by the subjects with which you are familiar. Personal knowledge acquired from personal experience is preferable to any enlightenment gleaned through research. Ask yourself: Is my subject timely? Will it interest my listeners? Can I speak confidently because I know whereof I speak? Will my pleasure in speaking on it radiate enthusiasm?

This criterion should help you determine whether you can speak with sufficient authority, and whether you can engender sufficient vim and vigor to be convincing and interesting. The best test of a good subject is not whether it interests you-but whether you can make it interesting to the audience. A speech on child culture would hardly be of interest to the Business Womens’ League at their annual banquet. Every speech should be fitted to the group that lends you their ears.

Select your subject with all convenient speed and then spend your time in preparation rather than procrastination. The topic you pick will determine your presentation of it. In Chapter 6 we pointed out the two principal types of talks; the informative which may be descriptive or narrative; and the argumentative.

Should your subject be a person, a place, or a thing it is informative and descriptive. Should action and a plot or design be added, it becomes narrative. Should you seek to sell your audience a program or a particular point of view, your speech is classified as argumentative.

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