To Write or Not to Write a Complete Script?
That’s the question. For assurance that the words will come when you need them, many speakers like to have a complete draft in hand. A draft helps you time a speech and polish your prose.
If you choose to draft a version, try dictating it so that your sentences and choice of words will be closer to being usable than those from a draft that has been composed by writing. Then edit your draft, using the techniques mentioned in the previous chapter.
Once you’ve polished the prose, you’re ready to throw away the script—almost. You want your polished draft for your practice but not necessarily for your delivery. And your practice will depend on your delivery method. Let me elaborate:
To Read or Not to Read Your Script?
Reading from a full script, speaking from an outline or notes, and memorizing—these are your delivery choices until technology makes it possible and affordable for all of us to have a portable teleprompter the size of our pocket calculator.
Here are the pros and cons of each delivery method.
Reading From a Full Script
You’ll be tempted to use this method because preparation time is less—if time is the sole issue. If effectiveness also matters to you, consider the pros and cons:
Pros—
• A script quiets your fears that you will go blank. Every single word in black and white in front of you provides a security blanket.
• Your timing will be perfect. You will know exactly how long each point takes, and with practice in reading, you will know that you can end on time.
• Your language will be more exact, precise, colorful, and grammatically correct than if you speak extemporaneously. You’ll have opportunity to rework and polish each sentence.
• You’ll have something “official” to give to the media if you’re a spokesperson for your organization. Scripts are often necessary if you have to gain official approval of your exact wording from your company’s public affairs officer or if you’re otherwise concerned that you’ll be misquoted. You can, however, always provide a written text to the media for their quotes and still deliver the thoughts extemporaneously.
Cons—
• You’ll have little eye contact with your audience. No matter how much you’ve practiced your upward glances, you’ll be tempted to read more and more. Particularly in the all-important beginning when you either win or lose your audience’s attention. The reciprocity of the situation is lost. When you speak to an audience eye to eye, you have their attention because they have yours. When you stare at the script, their temptation is to reciprocate by looking at their own notes or glancing around the room at others’ reactions.
• Your words lose their genuineness and intimacy. When you can’t look your audience in the face, you lose one of your best techniques for credibility. The effect is the same as when a lover who speaks a language different from his sweetheart pulls a scrap of paper from his back pocket and reads, “I love you for your beautiful personality, your thoughtfulness, and your sensitivity.” She gazes at his eyes while he gazes at the paper.
• You won’t sound natural. Despite the skill of an experienced speaker, you’ll have difficulty not sounding stilted—much like the “average Joe” testimonials on TV commercials.
• Your gestures will be nonexistent or contrived. To be effective, gestures should come from the gut. Reading stifles that unconscious signal to gesture where necessary.
• You’ll be tied to a podium without the freedom to move toward your audience.
• You may lose your place. The danger is that you’ll frantically find yourself paused in an inappropriate spot groping for the next phrase or idea.
• If it’s an audience you know well, they’ll contrast the way you usually talk and gesture with this different image and focus on the disparity between the two.
Speaking from Notes or Outline
By far, this is the most effective delivery method for the majority of speakers. Here are the pros and cons for your own evaluation:
Pros—
• You can maintain the all-important eye contact throughout.
• Your ideas will seem genuine and intimate because they will be spoken in your own spontaneous way with fresh inflection and emotion.
• Your gestures will be natural.
• Notes will provide you with an outline for security but freedom to move around and interact with the audience.
• You will have no fear to add or delete ideas, facts, or illustrations as necessary to suit audience needs or reactions. You’ll eliminate the fear of losing your place and your poise or of trying to find a spot in the script to jump back in.
Cons—
• Your exact phrasing will not be as precise as when read from a polished script.
• Your timing will vary.
Memorizing Your Speech
The final presentation method is memorization.
Pros—
• If you work very hard to memorize a script verbatim with all the appropriate inflection and gestures, you will sound like a genius—although maybe a robot genius.
Cons—
• If you have a memory lapse, you will feel like an idiot and your audience will think you foolish for being so “unprepared.”
How to Learn Your Material—Whichever Delivery Method You Choose
To Read from a Full Script
Whether or not you intend to use your script in actual delivery, prepare it for practice with inflection and timing. First, consider the layout of the page. Always double or triple space. For ease of reading, consider laying it out in two columns. Your eye can grasp shorter lines much easier than longer ones. That’s why newspapers and magazines use short-line, column layouts.
You may also skip extra lines between paragraphs to signal yourself that you’re finished with an idea.
If you decide not to use the two-column arrangement, then you probably will want to add further markings to your script to help you grasp ideas in a glance and deliver them with the proper pace and emphasis: Mark a single \ to indicate a pause; mark a double \\ to indicate a longer pause. With a highlight pen, mark key words and phrases that need special emphasis. Choose certain colors to help you quickly grasp the layout of your ideas. For example, use green for basic key points, red for examples and statistics, blue for the introduction to a long anecdote.
As for ease of handling your script, don’t break a sentence, paragraph, or list between two pages. And never type the script in all uppercase type; upper- and lower-case lets your eye quickly grasp where sentences begin and end.
Leave pages unstapled so that you can lay them aside more easily as you read each one. You may also want to insert margin notes for use of visuals, demonstrations, or other movements away from the podium.
If you plan to use a full script in delivery, always, always deliver your speech from the same copy you used to practice. Your mind will “photograph” chunks and the first words of a section will help your brain recall the remainder.
When you deliver your speech, don’t try to hide your script. The audience will know you’re reading, and trying to discreetly hide the script looks deceptive and silly.
Finally, concentrate on the meaning of what you’re saying rather than the phrasing. With concentration on concepts, your inflection, pauses, and gestures will improve.
To Speak from an Outline Only
If you agree that the outline-only delivery method lends the advantages you need, prepare two kinds of delivery aids: a full practice outline or script (laid out and marked as previously described) and a brief delivery outline.
A practice outline is a detailed outline on multiple pages or note cards. Again, the benefit of such detail is that it serves as a memory crutch for practice. But the negatives are that you will fumble with the pages during delivery and refer to the outline too frequently, losing eye contact and destroying credibility. For your actual delivery, construct only an outline of key words on a single page or on a few note cards that will trigger your memory with just a glance.
Try what I call a half-and-half outline script: Write the opening statement and the transitions for each point in polished form. Then express the meat of the idea only in key words. Those ideas will remain spontaneously fresh in the final speech.
Here are a few other guidelines to help you handle your notes or outline during delivery: Always number any note cards, but feel free to reshuffle them as needs change. Note how much time each point or illustration takes so that you can make an on-the-spot decision about what to eliminate or add if time runs short or long. Memorize your opening, your closing, and your transitions between points.
No audience will mind that you use notes or an outline. After all, they want to know you’re prepared. The issue is how you use them. To avoid depending on them too much, practice with your detailed outline. Then use only key words or phrases on your final outline to force yourself to look at your audience and deliver your points with conviction and freshness.
To Memorize a Script Verbatim
Prepare a written text (laid out and marked as previously described) and read it and reread it and reread it. Practice from the same script because your eyes will “photograph” copies of the page to aid memorization.
Break it into chunks and memorize one chunk at a time, devising some acronym or other mnemonic device to remind you of the correct order of the chunks.
My suggestion is not to memorize your script verbatim. You’ll fear going blank, particularly if there are any distractions. Memorization also makes the audience uneasy. At first they marvel, and then they worry that you’ll make it to the end.
But learning your material is a must.
Read your outline, notes, or script over and over. Read it aloud. Time yourself on each section and record the timing in the margins. Connect the ideas in some acronym and learn to predict the next thought before your eyes catch the next prompt.
Then stand in front of a mirror to practice so that you can see how often you are able to glance up from your notes.
After you’ve grown less and less dependent on your script or notes, memorize the opening, the transitions between key points, and the closing. That will allow you to maintain the all-important eye contact at the most important times—when you’re making a first impression and your audience is deciding whether you’re worth listening to, and at the conclusion when they fix in their minds how good you were.
As you practice, don’t be tempted just to read through your notes without actually expressing the key ideas in complete sentences. As someone has said, “There’s no substitute for scrimmaging.” The time required to express your ideas aloud in complete sentences and in the correct order will add polish and confidence to your “real” speech. Particularly pay attention to your delivery of any funny stories. They, more than any other part of your speech, succeed or fail based on delivery.
Do it live, aloud, alone. Do it in front of a mirror, an audiotape, or a videotape. Video is by far the best because you will be able to see distracting mannerisms, poor posture, and weak gestures. If a video is unavailable, an audio is the next best thing. You’ll catch irritating voice fillers (aahh, uh, okay, right?) and repetitive phrases (Let me emphasize that…).
Additionally, you’ll become more aware of your rate of speech, the tendency to let words trail off at the end of sentences, mumbling, or poor diction. You will also note where to add emphasis and variety. Another benefit of audiotaping is that once you record your speech, you can listen and fix the material in your mind as you complete other tasks such as driving to work or eating. Tape. listen. Rehearse again. Tape. Listen. Retape. You’ll hear dramatic improvements, and, again, these improvement will build your confidence.
Finally, you can practice in front of friends, family, or colleagues and get their feedback. If they’re interested, your enthusiasm and confidence will grow. If their attention wanders, you need either more practice or better material!
