(Watch this 6:39 video in Vimeo)
Last week I completed the first speech project in The Entertaining Speaker manual (five speech projects for learning how to entertain an audience). This was my first speech from the Toastmaster Advanced Communication manuals, and it feels good to be doing speeches again.
This was a true story. Immediately after it happened I recognised that it had speech potential. After telling this story to my friends and family I realised how powerful it was. The vulnerability and conflict in the story causes tension and makes the listener ask themselves what they would have done in that situation. And serious aspects are nicely balanced with humorous elements – like the main characters being in fancy dress.
I decided to frame the story within the ‘message’ of “be like a caveman”. This was an attempt at extending the humorous aspects of the story into a subversive non-message – i.e. something that sounded like a moral/lesson, but was actually just a joke. I have to admit that it didn’t quite work. It felt a bis disjointed. If I do this speech again I will try to emphasis the vulnerability, or the standing-up-to-the-bully aspects.
The Entertaining Speaker #4: A quiet little Cul-de-sac
(Watch this 7:33 vid on Vimeo)
I attended another amazing meeting at Phoenix Speakers on Wednesday. This new club is buzzing with energy and I’m really proud to be on the committee.
I completed the fourth speech project from the Entertaining speaker manual. The objectives were to deliver a dramatic talk with characters and dialogue.
I had written it and had it checked by my mentor well in advance, but I had only run through it about five times. My lack of preparation caused me to lose my place a few seconds into the talk. I just went blank. I had my notes in my back pocket and was able to make a joke about referring to them. To be honest it probably helped because it got a laugh which contributed to the “entertaining” nature of the speech. The rest of the speech flowed fairly smoothly, although I did have to improvise out of a couple more mistakes. Again, this probably helped the speech as my language would have sounded natural and unscripted.