Check for Variety - Part 1

Articles In This Section:

· Check for Variety - Part 1

· Check for Variety - Part 2

· Check for Variety - Part 3

· Check for Variety - Part 4

· Check for Variety - Part 5

Now that the speech is written, let's check it over for variety. The proverb says, "Variety is the spice of life." Variety helps make your speech good. The vaudeville show illustrates what I mean. First you saw dancers, then elephants, then singers, then acrobats —one following the other, not two teams of dancers together. You always wondered what was coming next. Try for a speech organization that keeps your audience asking, "What's coming next?"

It is easy to plan for variety. So far in this book we have discussed a number of different types of speech material. Remember those devices for making a talk interesting.

1. The anecdote 2. Gossip 3. Needling your facts 4. Dramatics 5. Persons and names 6. News 7. The family 8. Your possessions

Your check for variety in this talk should determine how well you have shuffled the elements. Don't put all your stories together, or all your facts, or all your personalities and names. Shuffle them. Perhaps you are not using all the elements, but if you use only three or four, shuffle the three or four so that you have variety. If you have two stories together, try to separate them.

Try for variety also in the types of material you use. All your stories do not have to be about the same kind of characters. The audience might go for one story about your Johnny, who is four years old and bright as a tack, but two or three or four stories about Johnny might be a pain. In my talk on "How to Run a Sales Meeting" I use stories on these subjects: "A Fight in the Movies," "The Chairman of a Meeting," "My Number Two Son," "An Indian," "A Sales Training Meeting," "The Speaker Who Shuffled His Card Notes," "A Janitor," "The Fellow Who Passed Out Something for the Audience to Look at," "A Waiter," "A Colored Fellow," "An Irish Judge," "The Fellow Who Is Called Upon without an Idea."

Because this talk is about running a meeting, many of the illustrations must be about speakers and meetings. But as you look over that list you can see how the one element, the anecdote, can be changed to give variety.

Your stories should be varied as to locale, characters, and types of conversation. Don't use a bartender in all your stories; it might lead people to think that you hang around bars. Use cops, ministers, bellhops, taxi drivers, too. Show that you get around. If both your good stories are about bartenders, change one to make the hero a taxi driver. If the settings of two stories are the same, change one of them. What difference does it make whether it is a drugstore or a bar and grill? You may say, "Look, I am seldom in such low places as bars and grills." Okay, use other locales. Don't try to make an audience feel that you are at home in Leo's Place if you never go into such a joint. Use the Union League Club instead—but don't place your story in the Union League Club if your club activities are confined to the Mulligan Marching and Chowder Club. Remember this—a story is usually just as good regardless of the type of characters or the locale. Put it in your everyday environment.