TJ Walker answers a listener asking about preparing a major speech. He advises against trying to write a long speech in one sitting; instead, he recommends frequently brainstorming short idea notes (10 words or less) in spare moments, collecting and prioritizing them into the top five points, developing stories/case studies and images for each point, creating a single-sheet outline with bullets and an image slide per point, and putting extensive data into a handout rather than projecting it. He notes exceptions for speeches that will be closely analyzed (e.g., presidents, UN directors).
Chapters
Mel writes in and says, TJ, thanks. Your course has been helpful. Thank you. I've got a big speech in September. I'm nervous and I'm purposely putting off writing the speech until August. Now, a little bit of advice. Don't write your speech. It's really hard to sit down and say, okay, now I'm going to create this massive 20 page opus that's something that will have you just procrastinate time and time again. My recommendation, anytime you get a spare moment, you're on a bus, a plane, a subway, you're waiting at a doctor's office, pull out your cell phone, go to a notes page and just brainstorm on ideas you have that you really want to communicate to your audience. Don't worry about making it pretty. Don't write a beginning and nothing flowery, just ideas. Ten words or less, a single sentence. Here's an idea, here's another idea. Come up with a page full of them and you can just do this in two and five minute spurts. You can be at the dinner table and the rest of your family isn't there yet. You got a few minutes. Boom. Just brainstorm on ideas, then let them sit for a few days, then look at all the ideas, try to put in priority and then narrow it down to your top five. Once you've done that, put those on a sheet of paper or a computer screen and brainstorm on stories you have involving real conversations with people about problems that relate to those points. Come up with case studies, come up with examples, then think of any image that will make the idea more understandable and come alive. My recommendation, end up with a single sheet of paper with your five main points, a bullet point or two under each one. For your examples, case studies, any really important numbers or facts, put them in and then a PowerPoint slide that has an image for each one of your points. And if you got tons and tons and tons of other data, put that in a slide deck that you email to people or hand out. But for goodness sakes, don't project it at the conference. That is far and away the best way to write a speech for 99.9% of the world. Now, if you are a president and people are going to be of a country and people are analyzing every word and media are dissecting it, that's different. If you are a Director General of the United nations and you've got people, people from every single country, translating it, analyzing it, trying to figure out how to put it into policy, that's different. You got to write out that speech. But for most people in the business world and even the government world, the hard part is getting your immediate audience to pay attention and understand and remember your audience. My technique is going to save you time and end up with a much better speech, so please try it. Don't wait until you've got a perfect moment of inspiration and a 10 hour block of time to write the of speech. Start brainstorming today.
