Your Public Best - Lillian Brown [54]
Polish the opening and revise it several times so that it is concise and will grab the audience’s attention. Make the audience look forward to the rest of your speech. At the very beginning, establish a momentum that carries your main idea through the body of your presentation.
In order to immediately create a mutual sense of trust and respect with your audience, try to deliver your opening from memory, rather than reading it from your written notes. This also allows you to establish good eye contact early on with your listeners.
The Body
The body of your speech should be nothing more than an orderly and logical presentation of the important points you wish to make. Develop each point as you move your central idea along. Present stimulating ideas that are worth thinking about and debating. Stick to each individual subject, treat it as a whole, and, when it is completed, move on to the next idea. Plan to alert your listeners to the fact that you are moving on to a new section of your speech through pauses and a change in your tone of voice.
You will find that you can present five or six clear-cut ideas in a fifteen- or twenty-minute speech. Your audience cannot grasp and will not remember much more than that. By confining yourself to a few, well-chosen points, you indicate your grasp of the subject and your ability to transmit the material so that it can be understood.
Jokes and the Use of Humor. Jokes are optional for use in your speech. If you are a good storyteller and you think that particular audience will enjoy your jokes, go ahead and use them. But if you think that it is going to be difficult for you to make the audience laugh, don’t attempt to tell any jokes. There is nothing worse than a joke that falls flat.
Some speakers employ joke writers or collect stories from many sources, including joke books or books containing quotations or anecdotes. At certain functions, such as a “roast,” jokes are a necessity. Even speakers who generally don’t use humor in their speeches keep a classic, sure-fire joke or two in their heads in case it is needed in an unusual situation, such as to defuse a hostile question or silence a heckler or wake up a crowd.
In any case, rehearse your funny stories or try them out on friends, throwing out those that bomb. Be sensitive to the occasion, gauge your audience, and always be sure your jokes are appropriate.
Bad jokes and cheap shots will not go over with most audiences. It should not even have to be stated that you should avoid any joke that could be construed to be racist, sexist, or an ethnic slur. Jokes about religion or sex are often told, but that doesn’t mean you should tell such jokes. A good litmus test for deciding whether to use such a joke is to think how it would seem printed word for word with your name attached to it in your hometown newspaper the next morning.
But gentle, kind humor is always welcome, be it witty, topical humor or the down-home kind. Jokes about the town you are speaking in always go over well, if they are carefully chosen and tasteful. Humor releases your audience and creates a bonding of openness and trust between you and your listeners.
TV and radio talk-show host and writer Larry King is famous as one of the funniest speakers on the lecture circuit. He can tell one humorous story after another about himself and others on a wide variety of topics. He even tells humorous stories about past speeches he’s given, the unusual groups who have invited him to speak, and their reactions to his sometimes tall tales.
Mr. King’s use of humor is a classic example of the bonding that can occur between a good speaker and the audience. Members of his audiences leave his speeches smiling and with a warm feeling.
Quotations and Anecdotes. Quotations can be very effective when used to substantiate the premise of your presentation. Use impeccable sources that