Today I am an ATMB, and the president of my club. I see people who join Toastmasters with the same excitement and enthusiasm I had when I joined three years ago. They give an Icebreaker, stumble through a couple of speeches and stop coming. I know why. They stop because they’ve experienced the same struggle as I did. The reason people suffer and subsequently become discouraged is that they don’t know how to write and prepare for a speech. That is a real tragedy because when these people quit, they leave with great speeches dormant inside of them that will never see the light of day.
It is clear to me that most people don’t fear standing up to speak; they fear standing up and failing miserably. I was fortunate to have veteran Toastmasters give me tips on how to prepare a speech, but many novices don’t get that same mentoring. Through experience and coaching, I learned some basic techniques that will help any Toastmaster write a great speech. Follow these techniques and you’ll find confidence and authority at the lectern and have an enjoyable speaking experience.
Finding Material
When confronted with the task of writing a speech, most of us suffer from writers block. We get bogged down in our daily routine and find it hard to come up with fun, interesting material. I have a few suggestions:
Pull out your soap box. We all have soap-box issues. Whether your soap-box issue is fitness, family, politics or religion, pull it out and dust it off. It is a subject you are already passionate about, so use that as material. You could probably give a speech on the subject without even writing it. How many times have you preached on your soap box issue to friends and family? Now, you have a captive audience at Toastmasters.
Watch television actively. Flip through the stations and weigh what people are saying on news programs and talk shows. Surely some topic will trigger an emotion in you worth discussing.
Friends and family are great sources of material, too. Pick up the phone and talk to the people in your life. They will remind you about stories and events that helped shape you and make bountiful speech topics.
Organizing Your Speech
After you have searched for material, write down all speech ideas, stories and topics that grabbed you. Write this material down as short phrases. Then circle those phrases and write single words or short notes around the topics you have selected. Pick the first words that come to mind. These words are the reasons you select topics in the first place.
After you go through this exercise, one of the topics will beg to be your speech. Write that topic at the top of a clean sheet of paper. Then write every phrase that comes to mind that might support your topic or your point of view. Do not censor yourself. Just write until the page is full. Review the phrases you wrote and pick three or four points that best support your topic. List them in order of importance. You now have the skeleton for your speech.
To flesh out your speech, write examples or ideas that relate to each point. Edit them down to your best two or three subpoints in your speech. These subpoints should help articulate the point and naturally segue into the next point.
Crafting Your Speech
Though you now have the skeleton of your speech, skeletons are not speeches in themselves – they are the bones on which you hang words, themes and emotions. You will need to flesh out the skeleton, and that is where crafting plays a role.
First, write an intriguing introduction. The purpose of your introduction is to grab the audience’s attention and lay
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