Sticking to the Point

In public speaking as in writing, it’s all too easy to go on and on and on. As a Toastmaster, I know that the biggest challenge in giving a speech is to keep from running over your alloted time, so I’ve worked hard to edit down my speeches to their core messages and to keep from going off on tangents during the live performance. It’s not easy. There’s always that irresistible urge to throw in more ideas, more advice. but last week I learned a trick surprisingly useful for both speaking and writing.

At last week’s Capitol Club Toastmasters meeting, my assignment was to deliver a 5-to-7-minute speech with a clear purpose that got right to its point. And pretty much stayed there. So, instead of using my usual speech-writing method of free-writing for several pages pages, gradually winnowing all of that down to the best parts, then timing it, realizing I still had way to much material and winnowing again — I tried a new approach. This time, the written draft of my speech was only four sentences long.

I picked a topic, “How do you decide what to take on a backpacking trip?”

I listed in two sentences what I wanted the audience to learn and remember about that topic: “Take only what you’ll need to support the three main activities of any backpack trip: eating, hiking, and sleeping. And to make it easy, just remember how these line up with the three basic human needs we all learned in grade school: food, clothing, and shelter.”

I added the controlling, limiting factor: gravity, as in the weight of the pack. “Whatever you decide to bring, you’ll need to carry up and down mountains for several hours a day, so the goal is to pack light. ”

That was it. Since I’m kind of a geek on the subject and could easily hold forth on it for hours longer than anyone could stand listening, I knew I could ad lib enough to fill in around the food-clothing-shelter concept by discussing some of the variables that made it so hard to make packing decisions, and I knew I could stay on topic and on track by coming back over and over to food, clothing, and shelter.

It worked amazingly well! I had saved myself at least a couple of hours of writing time and ended up with a much better speech than usual. As FDR once said when asked how to be a good public speaker, “Be sincere. Be brief. And be seated.”

ShareThis