Write a Great Speech in 5 minutes

After making multiple speeches to hundreds of people and winning a few competitions I found a formula that now allows me to write a good speech in as little as 5 minutes.

Here are the simple steps

Writing:

Start off with something interesting like an anecdote, statistic, joke and try to use a prop if you are allowed.

Do something that grabs the audience’s attention - the first 5 seconds are by far the most important- evoke some powerful emotion or reaction in them.

Once you have their attention then introduce yourself and explain what questions or curiosities you’re going to answer.

Following this get into the depth of your topic - include stats and facts but try to make everything a story or an anecdote.

Doing this makes your speech 10x as interesting, at the end of the day a story is the most interesting thing you can tell people - so attempt to include your content, whatever it is, in some form of story.

Once you have explained your idea you want to come to a simple memorable conclusion, the best way to do this is to link back to your memorable point at the start whilst explaining the questions you said you were trying to answer in the beginning.

Ok there are the basics of how to write a speech now here is how to present it.

Presenting: 

The best way you can improve your presenting is by practicing. Before doing the speech to an audience I would do it to myself in full without reading off the script. To learn the speech I would simply read it out loud then put the speech away and say as much as I could remember, I repeated this starting by reading the first paragraph then progressively more until I could remember the entire thing.

Once I was confident I would perform to family and friends before finally doing it before its intended audience.

Here are the key points when presenting a speech.

Talk slow – don’t assume any part of your speech is boring and rush over it.

Use body language – your hands especially- move them up and down and into different positions purposefully.

Talk to the audience – don’t look down at the ground, look towards the audience- I never made eye contact I just kind of look vaguely to different spots within the audience – this makes it look as if you are talking to the audience.

Use expressive movements – like walking around and changing your body language.

Use large vocal range – basically don’t just speak in monotone, try and make your voice interesting and expressive – really act out the emotion your are trying to give off with your words.

Here are some great examples of speeches that utilise these techniques and more that we can all learn from:

https://youtu.be/bbz2boNSeL0

https://youtu.be/7bVSOJL57F8

Here is a good TED talk that you can watch about how to use body language effectively https://youtu.be/ZZZ7k8cMA-4: