Where to Start a Speech
Most presenters ask advice about how to start a speech.
I’ve blogged about ways to begin a speech here and Olivia Mitchell offers her insights here.
In no particular order, here are some ways to begin a speech or presentation:
- Tell a story.
- State a surprising statistic or unknown fact, as long as you can back it up with a reliable source.
- Ask a challenging question, not a self-serving or obvious one.
- Make a bold and contrarian assertion.
- Refer to a current event, as long as you keep in mind that current, these days, means really, really recent.
- Use a quote, if your audience hasn’t already heard it a gazillion times.
But there’s another question, one that rarely gets asked. And it’s this: where do you start a speech?
Anton Chekhov, the 19th century master of the short story and drama, was once asked by a nephew how he knew where to start a play. He replied: “Take your blue book and tear it in half. Begin there.”
I think most presenters could take their scripts, outlines, or slide sets, and delete much of the beginning. It’s probably an exaggeration to say they could eliminate half, but they could greatly improve their talks by cutting the first quarter or third.
I don’t just mean that you should ditch the opening pleasantries — “I’m so happy to be with you today…” “What an honor it is for me to be addressing you…” “You’re such a great group of people…” (Churchill called such statements ”opening banalities.”) You should ditch opening pleasantries.
I mean that you should also cut most of your introductory or background information.
If you’ve done your homework and if you’ve researched every possible aspect of your subject matter, your greatest temptation will be to share it all with your audience. Don’t do it. You’ll either overwhelm them with information or bore them. Or both.
And don’t build step by incremental step up to your dramatic moment or insight. Start there. Start with the drama or the insight. Then you can always fill the audience in on how you got there — if, and only if, they need to be filled in.
Tags: how to start a speech, start a speech, where to start a speech
September 26th, 2009 at 2:02 am
[...] Witt theorizes on where to start a speech. I think most presenters could take their scripts, outlines, or slide [...]
November 9th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Godo article. Few things engages us as well as a concise and relevant story, as long as the speaker doesn’t wait too long before making clear his/her reason for sharing it….I often advise my students or clients to use a story to set up a PROBLEM that gets us interested in how it was SOLVED….
Paul Horn
November 20th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Paul,
I’m with you on making sure the story sets up a problem and a solution that are of concern to the audience.
Most of my opening stories are relatively short, but I have one or two that are by comparison much longer. Try as I might, I can’t cut them down. They’re the stories my audiences love most. I make sure that there’s something in the beginning of the story that cues the audience in to why I’m telling the story and how it might apply to them.