So we've been working on preparing the speech. And now the question is how do you get it into your head and out your mouth? Well I see four basic states of speech preparation. Completely off the cuff, an outline anchoring an extemporaneous speech, manuscript and just flat out memorized. And I don't think any one form is inherently better than the other, they do different work for different speeches. And I do want to be clear, the issue is not preparation or not, you must always prepare. But when I'm looking at a speech, I want to first decide if I'm going to outline it or manuscript it, okay. Once I do that, I can either go fully off the cuff, or I can look at the outline. Or if I could memorize, I might memorize a manuscript or I might read off a manuscript. But that outline manuscript seems to be an important breaking point for me. So how do we decide which way to go? Well, I gotta have answers to a couple of big questions. The first is, how long is the speech? So I am much more likely to manuscript shorter speeches and outline longer speeches. That saves prep time and honestly longer manuscript speeches are a bit harder In order to deliver. Now certainly, long manuscript speeches exist, right. The President's State of the Union address is a good example. But for us, most longer presentations can probably work from an outline with sections manuscripted out as needed. Now since we're talking about ceremonial speaking, most of those speeches typically are shorter, right? So toast, award presentation, so on so forth. Most of those lend themselves to manuscripting. So the first question, then, is length. And then the second question is, how important is the phrasing? So shorter speeches need to do more in abbreviated time frame. So phrasing really matters. A eulogy rests on its phrasing, right? And good phrasing is harder to do off the cuff. I've got an example of this. So for years, I used to have students do a stylistic argument, but I didn't demand that they manuscript it out. And the result was many tried to wing it when it came to the phrasing and it didn't work, okay. So these students had really good arguments, but honestly, the style was pretty boring. So I changed the assignment and I focussed on manuscript preparation. And sure enough, the argument quality stayed the same but the stylistic quality improved. Now, I'm not the first speech teacher to notice that, right? Aristotle suggested that the epideictic genre, which is our ceremonial speeches, was the most literary and I still think that's generally true. These are often shorter speeches that demand more from specific word choices and I think manuscripting is often a good choice in those circumstances. Okay, so we've got length, we've got phrasing, then the third question. How will a manuscript affect the performance? Is there an expectation of notes or not? So generally, more formal events presume manuscripts, less formal ones deny manuscripts. So for example, keynote speeches presume the presence of a manuscript. On the other hand, short, informal introductions seem kind of weird with notes. And I see lots of speaker introductions and those that go to written notes really highlight the gap between the announcer and the announced. So I go, well, it's clear, they don't actually know one another, okay? Now, that's not terrible. It's not awful but it's something I would like to avoid if I can. Also, if I've got a small audience, like eight people, under 10, if I've got a small audience and I've got a manuscript, that feels weird, okay? That needs to be an outline or extemp situation. So if I've written something out but I don't want to use notes, then I've got a final question. Can I actually memorize this? So I try to memorize short comments, so toasts, introductions, those types of things. Generally stuff under five to six sentences. Longer than that, I feel like I gotta go either back into a manuscript or back into outline territory. In that outline, maybe I need to know the chunks of the presentation, but maybe not the exact wording. But I will say, the nice thing about memorizing short comments is that it allows you to look off the cuff, or at least it should. And we'll talk about memorization later, but for now the important takeaway is memorize but don't fetishize. So if I've taken the effort to manuscript the comments and commit them to memory, I think they're important. But the performance is more important, okay? What I don't want is I've to say the same sentence again or to look like I've forgotten something. What I do is I memorize as best as I can and then I start speaking and if something gets dropped, well that happens, okay? So when deciding between outlines, manuscripts, memorizations, do some serious thinking here. You need to honest about how you want and need to use notes. Your decisions here should reflect the nature of the speech, the audience and the setting. [MUSIC]
