Write It in Units - Part 1

Articles In This Section:

· Write It in Units - Part 1

· Write It in Units - Part 2

· Write It in Units - Part 3

· Write It in Units - Part 4

· Write It in Units - Part 5

· Write It in Units - Part 6

· Write It in Units - Part 7

Writing your speech in units will save you time. It will result in a better speech. You have a synopsis and the material has been laid out on paper, in squares, as suggested in Chap. 3. Now as you look over that layout, what suggests itself? The material breaks up into a number of parts, doesn't it—parts or units. So let's write this talk in units.

A unit will be much like a short speech. It will be a short speech that covers one of the parts of your longer speech. You write a number of smaller speeches, you put them together, and you have a long speech.

There are a number of advantages in writing a speech this way.

1. You concentrate your thinking on one unit at a time and you plan and organize that unit more completely. You are not bothered by a score of ideas that belong in other units. By working out one idea only, an idea that will take you three or four minutes to express, you give it more complete coverage.

2. The outline for a complete speech is a real chore, but the outline for one unit is not too difficult to make. At home tonight you lay out and assemble the notes on a unit. What points do you want to make? What data do you have to make those points? What data do you have to look up? Tomorrow at the office you use the outline to dictate the unit to the girl or the machine.

3. You are not overwhelmed at the thought of writing a thirty-minute speech. You are doing a three- or four-minute unit. Think of the times you have put off writing that speech. You had to take a day off or give up a whole Sunday. And you sent the wife and kids off to Grandma's while you went to it. Nighttime found you completely exhausted, not too satisfied with your efforts, and swearing you'd have your head examined if anyone ever again talked you into writing a speech. Well, those days are gone forever.

4. You can write a unit at odd times. A few notes on the back of an envelope while you are waiting for a customer, while you are on the train or the bus, or those few minutes tonight before the neighbors show up to play bridge. Always you can find the time to outline a three- or four-minute unit.

5. By writing in units, you can better appraise the point made by that unit. Perhaps it is not worth a unit when you get all the evidence assembled. A4any times a point that seems important when you start to write the speech boils itself down to a mere statement without much to back it up. When that happens under this plan, the evidence can be combined in another unit or discarded.

6. Under this writing-by-units plan, you have a talk that can be cut to almost any length. If the complete talk runs to thirty minutes, you can cut it to twenty by eliminating units. You don't have to go through the whole speech and cut out some part of each unit. You eliminate one or more units completely. Since you give each point complete coverage, the audience will never know that you have cut anything.