Life After PowerPoint!

I believe that your message — your big idea, the structure, the stories, the images and metaphors, the words, the phrasing, the cadence, the rhythm, and sometimes even the rhyme — are what give your speech its greatest impact. (I’m taking for granted, mind you, that your message is in sync with who you are and with what you believe. And that it addresses the concerns of the particular audience you’re addressing.)

You can either write out your speech word for word, or outline it and talk it over again and again until you’ve refined and polished what you want to say and how you’re going to say it. It’s a rare person who can simply rough something out and wing it with any success.

All that preparation — either writing it out or talking it through repeatedly — is what makes memorizing your material relatively easy. For two reasons.

First, you’ve thought it through and it makes sense to you. The pieces tie together. It’s got an inner logic and flow. You believe it, you understand it, and you’ve internalized it. That’s 90% of memorizing. It’s what we used to call “learning by heart.”

And second, the words and phrases express just exactly what you believe. You’re not adopting someone else’s language or trying to sound impressive. You’re expressing your thoughts in a way that is both simple and clear, and if done right, elegant. If you’re having trouble remembering your main point, it’s probably because you haven’t expressed it well. Don’t berate yourself for having a poor memory. Try expressing your point in a way that makes more sense to you.

It only makes sense to memorize parts of your speech if (1) there’s a lot riding on it, or (2) you can recycle bits and pieces of it in later speeches.

Do you agree / disagree that content is what gives a speech the most impact? What are your thoughts about memorizing?

Photo, “Message in a Bottle,” courtesy of Mykl Roventine at Flickr.

Yesterday I wrote about the reasons why you should not memorize a speech. And then in my typical and, to some, irritating fashion of doing exactly what I tell other people not to do, I admitted that I memorize much  of most speeches I give. And I asked you to consider doing the same.

There are prosaic reasons for memorizing parts of your speech — like your opening and closing, for example — as I wrote yesterday. But there are other, less pragmatic reasons for memorizing what you want to say.

A word to hardnosed realists: I’m about to launch off onto a purely philosophical disquisition, a speculative inquiry.

A speech — a good one, at least — engages the memory and the imagination, the two most fundamental markers of what it means to be human.

Memory is our storehouse, a database of what we’ve experienced and learned. Without memory we are quite literally ignorant. We’re incapable of functioning, incapable of loving or of being faithful, incapable of gaining wisdom.

A speech engages our memories in two ways. First, it calls upon what is already stored there. We simply cannot understand, much less care about, something we have no — absolutely no — prior knowledge of. And, second, it adds to our memories. It gives us something — data, information, a way of thinking — we don’t already possess.

There’s a reason why, in Greek mythology, Memory (Mnemosyneis) is the mother the nine Muses, the patrons or personifications of the arts and sciences.

Our imaginations, on the other hand, are the capacity to create something new from what we already possess. Memory by itself locks us into doing the same things we’ve always done in the same way we’ve always done them. Imgination, like Red Bull, gives us wings. It sets us free to envision something new, something different.

Any speech worth listening to bounces back and forth between memory and imagination, between the familiar and the fanciful, between what’s known and what’s original. And the bouncing back and forth is where magic happens.

Since a good speech engages the audience’s memory — I wonder — shouldn’t it also engage the speaker’s memory?

In future posts, I’ll return to firmer ground. And I’ll offer suggestions about how you can memorize parts of your speeches, if you so choose.

What do you think? Have I totally launched into woo-woo land, or am I onto something?

There are so many good reasons not to memorize a speech.

First, memorizing a speech can rob you of spontaneity, the ability to react in the moment to the audience and to any unforeseen event.

Second, memorizing a speech can put distance between you and your audience. It’s as if you’re reading from a teleprompter in your mind. You may be making eye contact with your audience, but you’re actually looking at them through a scrolling text in your memory.

Third, memorizing a speech can trip you up. When you’re nervous, your body prepares itself to fight or to run away by sending blood and oxygen to the large muscles. It diverts that blood and oxygen from the higher regions of the brain, which govern verbal skills and memory.  So you’re more apt to forget what you were going to say. Which makes you more nervous. Which makes you even less able to remember.

Those are some of the reasons why most speech coaches will advise you against memorizing a speech.

I, myself, often advise my clients against memorizing their speeches. And yet I memorize much, if not most, of every speech I give. And I’d like to suggest you consider doing so yourself.

Here are the parts of a speech I tend to memorize and recommend you memorize.

The Structure or Outline of the Speech
You should be able to remember the main points of your speech from your introduction through your main points to your conclusion.

The Transitions
The weakest points of most speeches are the transitions, how you segue from one major point to the next. (It’s the point where speakers most frequently forget what they’re going to say next.) So work out a sentence or two that connects one point to the next, and memorize it.

The Opening
The first words out of your mouth – okay, the first 30 or 40 words – are the second most important words of your speech. Don’t leave them to chance or to the inspiration of the moment. Work them out in advance, practice them, and memorize them.

The Closing
The last words out of your mouth are the most important words of your speech. They require even more attention than your opening.

The Stories
Stories gain their power and their punch, in part, by the right selection of detail, by phrasing, and my making every word count.

Key Phrases and Sentences
Every quotable line from every memorable speech – from “give me liberty or give me death” through “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” — was painstakingly constructed. If you want your main points to be clear, to have impact, and to be remembered, you need to craft them carefully and memorize them. (In Lend Me Your Ears, Max Atkinson examines four rhetorical techniques you can use to make audiences applaud and remember what you say.)

John Kinde, a humorist and professional speaker I admire, offers much the same advice in his article titled “Should You Memorize a Speech?”

One of the questions this raises is, of course, what I mean by memorizing. But that’s the topic for a later post.

Do you memorize any part of your speeches? Do you see any value in it? Does memorizing help or hinder?

Photo courtesy of National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.