Do You Do Public Speaking?

Well, if you do, and I mean even just the occasional presentation at work, I have an odd piece of advice for you. Even if you like to write fiction, I think this will still help you.

Go download a podcast. Fast forward it past the goofy music and whatnot at the beginning until you get to the meat of the thing. Ideally, you'll grab one that has either one, or maybe just two speakers.

Open your favorite text editor. Put on some headphones. Arrange your media player so you can see the pause/play button behind the text editor. Press play, and start transcribing what's said. (You'll have to pause from time to time to catch up unless they talk deliberately or you type even faster than I do, but I'm over 100 wpm, so good luck there.)

Then, as you get used to it, start editing what they say for readability. Eliminate false starts and re-order sentences that are poorly structured. If they make up words and it's not a "fun" word invention, but because their vocabulary didn't supply the right one, correct it.

Do about five minutes. Go up to ten if you can take it. Do that every once in awhile. Don't do the same podcast twice so you'll really have to listen. It'll take you about an hour maybe, at first, to do ten minutes of audio. You'll slowly get faster. But that's not why you're doing this.

When you write down what someone says when they are speaking to impart information in the clearest, most interesting way possible (because, if that's not the point of a good podcast, I can't think of a reason for them to be) you will really begin to see what works and what doesn't.

I can now hear all the run-on sentences that come out of my mouth. I know where to break them to make the ideas easier to understand. Best of all, I have a much better sense of how long I have to get an idea across before the people listening start to think, "Oh, please. Just hurry up."

I am sad to tell you that the more questionable the subject of the podcast, the more of a scam it sounds like, the better the public speaking is. It's clean, quick, easy to follow. It makes the listeners feel smart and involved, and it draws them in. I can see how the scams work now. They make their pigeons feel so much a part of what's being proposed that I'm surprised there aren't more people taken in by them.

Do yourself a favor. If you have to speak to more than two or three people on a even a semi-regular basis, it's worth the work just to really hear what does and doesn't work in our fine, fine language. I really think it will work for you. (And it will only cost you $39.97, payable in five installments.)