Speech Writing Techniques

Do you struggle with fear, doubt, and worry in your public speaking? Do you find it difficult to connect with your audience and deliver presentations that leave a lasting, positive, unforgettable impact? If yes, then let's dive in the world of public speaking and presentation skills with your host, Eric Edmead.

Welcome to the unforgettable podcast Speechwriting Techniques. Let's talk about it. How you write a speech. Well, first of all, you don't write it like, I'm really serious about this. There are exceptions, of course. If you are delivering legally sensitive or politically sensitive information, it might be a good idea to write out the speech, have it vetted by the lawyers, and then read it from the teleprompter. But with those exceptions in mind, I would suggest to you, never, ever write out a speech. Do not be a speech writer. Be a speech designer, a presentation designer. Now, first of all, let's talk about why not to write out a speech. It's actually pretty straightforward. You have a number of different types of memory. One of your types of memory is linear memory. It's chained memory. It's like you remember A, B, C, D. But if somebody asks you to do the Alphabet backwards, if you've never really learned that skill, it's a little difficult. Or if somebody asks you to do the Alphabet from some random point in the middle of the Alphabet, you kind of have to go, A, B, C, D. Because it's a chained memory. If you were to suddenly forget one letter, you might not be able to get to the next one. Now, in a speech, what happens when you write your speech is your mind automatically starts trying to memorize the words. Now, if you're going to be on stage for an hour, I want you to think about how many words that might be. It's a lot of words. So you're now trying to memorize lots of words. And if you forget one word or one section of words, they were chained to the next words. And all of a sudden you've got that horrible situation which is, I have no idea what I was about to say next. So writing out the speech is not a great idea for that reason. Here's another reason. When people write out their speeches, it changes their speech patterns. You see, the way we speak and the way we write are very different things, right? When we speak, we speak in complete sentences. So when you see somebody who's written out their speech, it'll sound something like this, I wrote this speech. I wrote each sentence perfectly with the grammar that you would expect for written language. And now you can pick that up in the way I'm speaking, because I'm speaking in complete sentences. Nobody really talks that way. Nobody speaks in grammatically perfect English all the time. So when you write the speech, you'll change your speech patterns, which will break authenticity. And by the way, it also has an impact on your tone of voice, because once you're memorizing a speech or reading it off a teleprompter, you are in a situation where it is hard to improv your reactions to the things you're saying. So once again, it becomes, I am going to give this speech, which I am reading off the teleprompter, and I'm really quite in my mind right now about whether or not they can see if my eyes are moving while I read the teleprompter. It's insane. No, Instead, we do something called speech mapping. And speech mapping is a visual representation of your speech. It's just like a mind map. You draw out your map and you put the topic at the center, and then you have the topics that you want to discuss or the stories you want to discuss around the outside and in rough chronological order. Now you just have to remember the map, and that map is going to guide you through the presentation so that you don't need notes, you don't depend upon your slides, and you certainly don't ever need to write and then read your speech.

So that's it for today's episode of Unforgettable. Head on over to itunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on itunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a private $25,000 VIP day with Eric Edmeads himself. Be sure to head on over to unforgettable show and pick up a free copy of Eric's gift and join us on the next episod.