By guest blogger Justin Osborne [see Biography]
[September 15, 2017] Crafting a fabulous speech requires dedication, practice and of course, several tricks to create the best formula. If you want to lead the audience through your words, meeting the deadline is not your only priority. A goal of every good speaker is to make speeches great and spontaneous, and most importantly, hard to forget.
Are you wondering how to write a speech that screams success? Here are some of the best ideas to achieve this in under 20 minutes:
1. Focus on Structure
The first thing to consider when writing a speech is the structure. Without it, you can easily get stuck or misdirected through the writing process, which will result in a non-influential, vague speech that does not reach your audience.
How do you avoid these troubles?
Here are some ideas that may help you:
- Start with an interesting fact to capture the attention of the audience from the beginning
- Add a few jokes to your speech, if they are suitable in the context. Laughter can win the attention of the audience
- Spread out the key information evenly, not all at once
- Lead your audience towards the idea, but do not force it on them
- End with a thought provoking sentence or call to action
2. The 10-Minutes Rule
Once you have planned your speech’s structure, it is time to focus on its length. If you decide the length of your speech from the beginning, you can easily plan your time and order.
We all know that the attention span is short and there are many things to distract your audience. The 10-minutes rule is very simple – offer value, leadership and information within a limit of only 10 minutes to avoid giving a lengthy, boring speech.
In addition to helping you keep your audience interested, the length of your speech will help you plan your material. How much material you can use and which information you can include in your speech will depend on this set timeframe.
3. Rehearse Out Loud
In most cases, speakers spend all the time on writing the speech, and almost none on rehearsing it. With our busy schedules, you will probably have the same problem. Therefore, a good idea is to always rehearse your speech out loud while writing it.
This may sound ridiculous, but speaking it out loud is much more effective than running the speech in your head. Speaking out loud allows you not only to practice your tone and way you give the speech, but to also find the gaps and mistakes in terms of wording and clarity.
When you are done writing your speech, you will learn that reading it aloud helped you practice your speech to an extent that you basically do not need to work on it afterwards.
Writing a 10-minute speech in only 20 minutes is not as complex as people think. Of course, this is not something to be taken lightly, since your goal is to lead the audience and keep them interested in what you have to say. Therefore, practice these methods to avoid all the troubles of writing your own speech within a short timeframe. A little dedication, some rules and repetition can do wonder for your speech writing skills.
Biography: Justin is a teacher from Leicester, England, UK. When not teaching his little students and rooting for Leicester FC, he loves to share his thoughts and opinions about education, writing and blogging with other people on different blogs and forums. Currently, he is working as an editor at the writing service Bestdissertation. Follow Justin on Facebook and Twitter.