Working through the night on putting together a great speech or presentation is all well and fine, but very often it's a matter of mistaking the map for the territory. A great speech on paper is one thing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it translates to a great speech once you're up there in front of an audience.
Photo credit: Tomasz Trojanowski
So says speaking expert TJ Walker in today's video tutorial. The fact is that public speaking, whether you're giving a PowerPoint presentation or making a speech, is a different skill to effective writing.
Sure, it makes sense to plan your speech, but if that means poring over the words at the expense of rehearsing the delivery, chances are that you're going to have a stitled, text-heavy, unnatural sounding presentation rather than one that flows in the style of everyday conversation.
TJ Walker says:
''Certain things look good on paper, but they don't sound good. Some of the big dangers?
Sentences that are too long - you can read a sentence with twenty-five words in it. It's very hard to say a sentence of twenty-five words without running out of air like I'm doing now. You need shorter sentences, you need one word sentences, you need repetition of words.
Now on paper, your highschool English teacher would circle that saying 'you just used that word, that's not right. That's not a full sentence.' Guess what - if you're writing a speech, it's not highschool English composition.
''
Here is the video:
TJ walker on why public speaking is not a written art form. You need to pratice and write your speech for the ear not the eyes.
In short, what you need to do is:
''...simplify it, shorter sentences. You need contractions. In the real world you don't say 'I will do this', 'I will not do that'. You say 'I'll do this', 'I won't do that'. You use contractions, make it conversational. Watch out for the whiches, the therefores and the thats and the formers and the latters. That's not the way we talk in real life.''
It pays to spend as much time running through your delivery, as it does hunched over a piece of paper or your laptop trying to think of your content. In the long run, this is going to make your speeches and presentations a lot more fluid, and a lot less like somebody reading from a textbook.
