Can I Read My Speech?

Many of my students come the to the TalkPower Workshops with the idea that reading a speech is unprofessional; they fear that reading will make them lose their spontaneity. This is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard and completely impractical. An all-or-nothing approach will only serve to discourage you from ever taking the risk of ever speaking in public.

Isn’t it better to feel confident, using a script? Why avoid an opportunity to speak because you will forget what you wanted to say? If you do accept and opportunity to speak, isn’t it foolish to run the risk of rambling on and on, feeling insecure and embarrassed? Is it any wonder why there are so many terrible speakers out there when people are taught that using a script is a big no no? Of course you can read. Common sense will tell you that confidence comes from feeling secure, and this will happen only if your speech is accessible.

The fact is that people use their spontaneity when they read from a paper because they prepare a talk as if it where a term paper. “Fill up as many pages as possible and you’ll get a better grade.” If the professor had to skim over repetitions and irrelevancies, that was his problem. A listening audience cannot skim. Go of the beaten track for half a millisecond and you lose your crowd. The audience tunes out planning dinner, lunch, the weekend, counting the tiles on the ceiling…

Learning how to write for a listening audience, not a reading audience in a TalkPower workshop makes all the difference. After you have been using a written script for some time, and have internalized what a real beginning, middle, and end are all about, you will be able to speak without a script.

An old wives tale maintains that if you read from a script you will sound stilted. Actually, you sound stilted when you constantly read with your nose in the text. The secret of appearing spontaneous lies in rehearsing the script so that you look up at the audience and then back at your script, from time to time. Practice your talk looking at the text, then looking out at your imaginary audience, then finding your place and looking at your text again. Not only will you feel secure, you will appear charming, knowledgeable, and in control.

Each year I subscribe to a series of play readings in New York City, produced by a very talented theater company called TACT (The Actors Company Theater). The actors are all seated in a semi circle and every actor reads from his script. These readings rank among the best theater I have ever experienced. Much work and rehearsal goes into each production, yet not one actor memorized or improvises his part. Every word is read from a script, and the results are always delightful.

Politicians read their speeches from a teleprompter and they usually go off without a hitch.

Perhaps last month you saw a professional speaker a long, magnificent, hilarious presentation without reading fro ma single note. And perhaps you felt envious and inadequate. Let me assure you that this professional speaker has probably given the same talk 100 times in the last five years.

“I was scheduled at two colleges on two successive days. On the first day my talk on Ecology went over so well I decided to get more mileage by giving it the second day. My teenage son was with me and during dinner, prior to the second talk, I suddenly became aware that my son was regailing the head table with an exact account I had given the night before- and was about to give again!”

                                                            -Issac Asimov

Speaking Names Clearly

Many people mumble and stumble through names and abbreviations of names making it impossible to understand what they are saying. I am calling special attention to this because time and gain I have to remind the participants in my workshops to speak the name of people, places, and things slowly and clearly. This is true even for many experienced speakers. When you have a written text, names and letter and abbreviations are always printed in bold type, or italics, or some form of capital letter. The same type of special attention should be paid to names when they are spoken. Actually, more attention is necessary because the spoken word is so fleeting. Even if your associates tell you that your talk went very well, ask if they were really able to understand all the names you mentioned.

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The TalkPower Word Budget

Students tell me that their inability to edit material is a major problem. Often they accumulate enough research material to talk for hours even though they only have 10 minutes to do their presentation. Cutting this down for your allotted task is a herculean task, leaving you feeling totally overwhelmed.

            It’s like a dream I sometimes have. In this dream I go into my office and all of the files are turned upside-down and emptied out on the floor. I need certain documents quickly, to prepare a summation for a jury, and I don’t know where anything is. I feel rushed and helpless. I don’t know where to begin. That’s what it’s like when I have to prepare a summation or a speech, or any kind of presentation.

                                   

                                                                        -Jason, Attourney

Almost every presentation has a time limit. Since there are approximately 150 words to 1 minute of speaking time, once you know how much time you have for your talk you can keep track of the amount of material you need by using a word count to limit yourself. This is how you do it.

If you are given 10 minutes to give a presentation, you will have to prepare fewer than 1500 words, including time for pauses. The combination of a time limit and word count gives you and approximate word budget to work with (there area bout 250 words per double space type written page, given 1-inch margin and a 12 point font).

If this idea seems radically different from your normal procedure don’t panic. Writing a talk will become as familiar as driving to work, when you understand the rules. Once students learn how to edit themselves in terms of minutes and word counts, they are amazed at the beauty and clarity of their talks. In addition, the time saving factor of using this formula is considerable.

Verbal Graphics

The TalkPower Action Formula (refer to TalkPower Kindle) provides a perfect vehicle for stylizing the look and sound of your talk. Verbal graphics is the TalkPower method of breaking a speech down into sections and then shaping the speech with strategically placed pauses. These pauses give your presentation the same design you would find in a poem of an essay. Just as the written page is designed with headlines, margins, bold print, bullets, and spaced, spoken word needs the contrast of silence and sound for style, beautiful design and dramatic effect.

Verbal graphics create the space (silence) for the audience to take in and reflect upon what you are saying. These pauses create a rhythm that brings your presentation to life. The rhythm causes the speaker and the audience to move back and forth, figuratively, in unison. This movement is the catalyst for the intensity that occurs between speaker and audience when so-called dynamic speakers perform. For example:

Speaker: When I was doing my research for this talk I got the strangest call. (Pause)

Audience: (leans in)

Contrast this with the following:

Speaker: when I was going my research for this talk I got the strangest call. It was a young man that claimed he had been abducted by aliens!

As you can see, a pause brings dramatic tension to a speech, providing the speaker with a mysterious quality called presence or charisma. I can think of many well-known speakers (I will not name them because I do not wish to embarrass them) who speak well, but are not thought of as dynamic presenters. They speak in endless even blocks of sentences with no pauses at all. In that case, the entire speech becomes one long ribbon unraveling with no values, colors, shades, or changes.

If speech without the logical pause is unintelligible, without the psychological pause it is lifeless

                                                            -Constantine Stanislavski

Even if the speaker has an interesting voice filled with a variety of intonations, he/she will not project a dynamic personality if he/she does not pause properly. What begins with and exciting liftoff for the audience when the speaker first appears, fades as the speech progresses and the attention of the audience suddenly begins to diminish. I have seen this happen on numerous occasions, and I thought, “if only there were 10-15 well places pauses in this speech, the speaker would surely receive a standing ovation instead of polite applause.”

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