4 Super Ways To Find Your Next Speech Topic

Finding a speech or writing topic can be difficult. It sometimes gets more difficult the further along you get. In fact, I believe a lot of people quit speaking or writing because of the difficulty they have finding a topic.

Don't quit! You've got great stuff inside you, and we want to hear and read about it.

There are many ways to find a topic. Today I’m going to tell you 4 SUPER ways.

Of course you've heard of brainstorming. Well, today’s tip is a specific form of brainstorming.

I believe in the power of questions. Questions help me focus my creative efforts. If I have a good question to guide me, usually that does the trick of helping me find a good topic for myself. Not always, but often enough. If they work for me, they will certainly help you.

Here are four questions to help you find a topic.

Got your pens and pencils ready?

1. What unusual experiences have you had?
2. What special knowledge or expertise do you have?
3. What strong opinions and beliefs do you have?
4. What would you like to know more about?

Answering each of these questions one at a time by writing the first things that come to mind can help you find what you are looking for. Don't edit what you write. Just write. It's what I've done below as an example.

What unusual experiences have I had? (Don’t compare yourself with others). What’s unusual for me? Well, the other night I was in my friends house. In the sink was a strange looking creepy crawly insect that scared me. That might be a topic. Could it make an interesting speech or essay? Absolutely!

What special knowledge or expertise do I have? (Again, don’t compare. “I don’t have any” is not true. It’s only true if you compare it to others. Just think what’s true for you).

I’m a pretty good speaker. I can write a decent speech. Perhaps I can tell someone how to write a speech.

What strong opinions do I have? I hate child abuse! I could write a speech about that. (Of course, some topics you want to pay attention to how they might affect the audience. But… for the most part, don’t worry. Just speak!)

What would I like to know more about? I’d like to know more about finance. So, I can study this and make a speech about some aspect of finance.

So there you are. I’ve given you four questions that can help guide you on a path to finding your topic. Remember not to compare yourself. I find comparisons block me from the right topic for me to speak about.

Of course, once you find your topic, you then have to do the hard work of narrowing it down into a manageable speech topic. On hints about how to do that, check out here.

This post was inspired by Jo Sprague & Douglas Stuart's book.

Do You Make This Speech Writing Mistake?

Finding a speech topic to talk about is difficult enough. All that thinking and working and coming to find what you feel confident talking about can be stressful. But sometimes the stress becomes worse when we realize that our subject matter is too general. I hate it when that happens.

Last week I wrote an article about personal branding. As soon as I started to write, I realized I needed to tighten my focus. Personal branding was too general to write about in 800 words.

To focus my essay, I needed a trick to help me. Once I did, the words flew from my pencil. Whenever you have a limited & focused speech topic, your speech can practically write itself. If you keep your topic general, you’ll keep having the same old troubles.

So, to narrow your topic, practice these tips:

Narrow your subject to one example or one individual that represents that subject.

For example, if your general subject is money, you narrow it to the example of The Thai Bhat. Or you might narrow it to the person Warren Buffet.

You can also narrow your subject to a specific experience.

For example, if your subject is money, you could narrow your subject to The trip you took to the bank last week.

You can narrow your subject to a specific time or place.

For example, if your general subject is Water Shortages, you could narrow your topic to The water shortage in Seoul. Or you could narrow it to the Korean water shortage of August 2008.

Lastly, you can narrow your subject to a specific type or kind. A condition. Or you can limit it to a specific procedure or process.

For example, if your general subject is Water Shortages, you could narrow your topic to Water shortages caused by drought. Or, you might narrow it to How a water shortage happens.

It’s important to narrow, because it keeps your speech interesting. And, it keeps it easy for an audience to understand, as well as for you to write. If you try and make a speech that has both a specific place and a specific process in it, your speech will be too difficult to manage in a short amount of time. So don’t do it. Keep it simple! Do that and you’ll have great speeches.

So stop making the messy mistake of making things too general. Do better and you’ll soon be better.

Cheers!

How To Make Your Speech Focused, Clear And Interesting To Your Listeners

Can you guess the secret of creating a speech that is focused, clear and interesting to your audience? Simply stated, the secret is in learning to ask the right questions.

Let’s back up a bit…

Are you tired of boring your audience? Are you tired of losing their attention immediately after you begin your speech?

Personally, I can think of little worse than watching as an audience, who was at the beginning excited and expectant, begins to drift off and lose their focus on you. I have struggled with this, throughout my short speaking career, a number of times. But, I recently began practicing a technique that really helps me keep the audience interested. The technique is one that will be sure to keep your speech focused, clear and interesting to your listeners.

Of course, we should all be aware by now of the notion that when we speak, we should consider our audience. After all, it is them we are talking to. So, before we even begin writing a speech, we need to ask ourselves what our audience will receive from listening to our speech. If the answer is that they will get a better understanding of you as a speaker, then that is okay for one or two speeches. But, overall, a talking only about yourself becomes boring very quickly.

Why?

Because audiences are selfish. As altruistic as they may pretend to be, the bottom line is that an audience is a group of humans—selfish by nature—who are gathered together in the circumstance because they want to get something from the speaker and the speaking situation. We will do WELL to remember this vital, unchangeable, natural law.

That said, we always want to ask ourselves, “how will my speech information help the listeners in their life?” If we cannot answer, then don’t speak about it. Our speech should have a gift for our audience. (A new insight, a new way of acting, some new relevant information, something for them to think about).

If we can answer the question, then we can proceed.

A speech starts with a topic. …duh?

We need to decide what it is that we will say about the topic. A sentence that contains the topic, and what we will say about the topic is called—one of many names—a thesis. For example, we might be talking about Dogs. Well, what do we want to say about dogs?

Dogs are cute.

Okay. Good example, but a weak thesis. There is no vitality, no real depth to this.

Dogs make great pets.

This is still pretty uninteresting, but it is a little more filled with possibility for discussion. Why? Because there are some questions we can ask of it to define what we mean when we say, “Dogs make great pets.” Can you think of any questions?

For example:

What kind of dogs? Why do they make great pets? What do you mean great? Why should I care?

Choosing and answering these questions in your speech might make it more interesting. For example:

Ladies and gentleman, today I’d like to talk to you about one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves. Have you any idea what that gift might be?

The greatest gift we can give ourselves is a best friend, a pal who won’t go away when we are angry, a chum who won’t call us stupid, a friend who will always play with us whenever we feel like it. One of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is…a dog.

Dogs make great pets!!!

Now, do I mean just any kind of dog? No. Some dogs are crazy. Rottweilers are psycho, and I don’t mean them. But pretty much any other kind of dog are awesome. And they are awesome for three reasons.

Dogs make great pets because they are loyal. Who doesn’t love loyalty. A dog will be your best friend whether you kick it, call it names, or treat it like a king.

They make great pets because they always eat the left-overs. You never have to feel guilty for throwing away your uneaten food. If you have a dog, you can feel it the scraps. And let me tell you, the dog will LOVE YOU!!!!

Dogs also make great pets because they’ll keep you safe at night. If you live alone in a big city, it can be scary. But if you have yourself a big dog like a German Sheppard or a Lab, then they will bark loudly if someone tries to break into your apartment. This is good.

To conclude, a great pet is one that makes you feel good, one that brings you joy. We all deserve joy. Joy is a great gift to give ourselves, so I really recommend you consider getting yourself a dog. Because dogs make super awesome pets!

Now this is just a silly example. But you will notice that all of my questions have been answered in the speech. Answering the questions makes things a little more interesting, I think.

But what if we take a topic that is a little more involved? Take, for example:

Practicing these 5 tips can help you give a great phone interview.

This thesis begs quite a few questions that can be worked into a speech.

For example:

What are the tips? How can they help me? When do people do phone interviews? What are the differences between real face to face interviews and phone interviews? When and why do people usually do phone interviews?

Of course, you cannot always answer every question that you can think of. But, you can certainly answer some. Learning to ask your thesis questions is a fantastic way to develop a speech. Answering those questions in your speech will make your speech focused, engaging and interesting to your listeners.

So here are two assignments:

1. Answer the questions to the thesis above.
2. Make questions to the thesis below. Post them in my comment board. We can talk about your questions, and maybe I can give some suggestions to help you.

Thesis: Love is the answer to so many problems.

In a later blog, I’ll talk about how to make a good thesis.

All for now.

How To Avoid Annoying Your Audience

When you speak, does your audience fall asleep? Avoid eye contact? Pick up their pens and start doodling? Gaze off out the window. Tap their feet in anticipation of your finishing up your speech? If so, you might be an audience annoyer!

An audience annoyer is one of those people who gets up in front of an audience and talks and talks and talks. Usually they speak about a subject that is of no interest to the audience. They often try to engage the audience with a question, only to find the audience is not paying attention.

Or, sometimes an annoyer is someone who works really hard at trying to speak so eloquently that they completely lose the message that they are trying to convey—if in fact they have a message at all.

Often, audience annoyers are users. They just want to use the audience like a dog uses a human leg. They just want you to lie there while they go about their business. “Oh, don’t mind him. It’s best if we just let him go on until he finishes.”

Or they use the audience as a forum, a place where they can prove their lingual brilliance, a place to show off their large and varied vocabulary.

No matter the description, audience annoyers are annoying to an audience. They do not accomplish their goal, no matter what their aim. They forget the maxim: IT'S ABOUT THE MESSAGE FOR THE AUDIENCE! IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU!

For those people who in fact do not just want to use the audience as a sounding board--or as a leg to hump—then this article is for you. It’s for you, because you probably have a general wish to communicate, to share your wisdom and knowledge with the audiences you address. So, how then do you avoid annoying your audience?

Easy….

Stop using us!

Stop trying to impress us.

If you are using a word that has more than two syllables, cut it out.

If you are speaking a sentence or a question that has more than 10 words, cut it out.

If you are speaking in any tense other than the simple future, simple past, or simple present, stop!

Keep things simple.

Learn the simple.

Cut your main message down to 5 words. (No more than 8).

Now, just for an experiment, take a moment. Count a few of the sentences in this essay. How many words per sentence are there? You will probably find most have less than 10. So should yours. Go, and do like wise!

The days of long arduous prose-like verbiage are over. Abe Lincoln & Dan Webster are dead. They are not coming back anytime soon. So get with the times! Speak simply and clearly. Use simple baby words like most of the ones in this essay.

Have a clear point. If it's not clear to you and at least three other people, then for the audiences sake do not step on that stage. Because without a clear, simply stated message, you’ll be recommitting the ugly sin of humping our leg and expecting us to sit there and wait until you are finished. We hate having our leg humped!

Intercourse should be mutual. It should be collaboration between two people--in this case speaker and audience. It should never be one-way masturbation.

If you need help clarifying, simplifying your message, then do yourself a favor and ask someone for help. If that person doesn’t help, then ask another person.

Buy books on how to write a speech central idea, or theme.

Again, get simple.

Go back to baby school and learn the basics. There is nothing humiliating about humbling yourself to learn the baby basics that you might not have learned the first time around. There is no shame in that at all.

The only shame is the shame of watching as your audiences eyes glaze over the moment you take the stage.

The only shame is seeing them pull out their pillows and blankets right when you start to speak.

The only shame is seeing half the people room start staring at their toes, a quarter of the room staring at the roof, five people doodling in a notebook, and the final three getting up to go to the bathroom as soon as you expose your first point.

So, bottom line: Avoid shame. Do my tips. Or....go here.

How To Give A Review That Excites Your Audience!

I belong to Toastmasters.

I love Toastmasters, and I love everyone who is a part of that fantastic club. …okay, not everyone. But I at least respect everyone. It takes a hell of a lot of courage to get up in front of complete strangers and speak. So, to everyone who joins and participates in TM, you rock!

Every now and then, however, there are people who really struggle with their speeches. They struggle to understand how to make their speeches entertaining. It took me a long time to learn how to put together a speech, and I’m certainly no where near where I want to be. I believe, though, that I know a little bit.

Because of that brazen assumption, I’d like to tell you today how to prepare a mini-speech—sometimes called a Review—that is designed to introduce something to the audience that you, as a speaker, find interesting. That thing can be a movie, a philosophy, a book, a restaurant, a park, or just about anything you feel excited enough to talk about.

Of course, as a speaker who’s excited about your subject, you want to inspire and excite your audience enough to experience the thing you’re discussing. If they go, then you two will have something in common that the both of you can discuss later on.

Knowing this, it’s important that when preparing your review, you consider these 3 points:

First, always always always chose one, and I mean ONLY ONE, unique selling point. Remember that a Review in Toastmasters is only to be two minutes in length. One unique selling point is all you have time to talk about.

What is it that you like about the thing you are sharing with us? What are you certain to be the big benefit that the audience is likely to get from the thing you are sharing. For example, you might be sharing with us a book that you enjoyed. What about the book do you think the audience will appreciate? Think hard. Then, after you’ve given it a good think, decide what the one unique selling point is, and move on to point number 2…

Second, state that unique selling point as a short, concise question that you’ll spend the next two minutes answering. For example, you might ask the audience: “Tired of reading boring books about stupid dumb people?” So what is the USP of this question? The selling point is that the book you are reviewing will probably be a book that is not a boring book about stupid dumb people. Instead, it will probably be about something else. That something else is the thing I’ll describe in point 3…

Finally, answer the question by explaining the unique selling point. The question that you posed in the introduction is actually a problem that needs to be solved in your brief review. This should be easy to do in a simple way within the two minute time frame.

The best way for me to explain this is to write a mock version of a review:

“Fellow Toastmasters and Welcome guests…Tired of reading boring books about stupid dumb people? Well have I got a solution for you! This book is anything but boring. It’s packed with awesome characters who talk funny and creative, who are smart, and are positively cool. It’s the story of Bob who is a really silly man who just so happens to love a unique lady named Veronica. Unfortunately, the woman is in love with only her dog, so she find’s Bob quite ugly.

The ending is unlike anything you could ever possibly expect. It’s exciting and bizarre, and I really recommend it. If you’d like to know more, please ask me during 2nd Round. (If you are unfamiliar with 2nd Round, that’s where all the Toastmasters people go out after a meeting and socialize).

Briefly, you should know that you can buy this book at any bookstore. It costs about 9000 Korean won.

So, do yourselves a favour….if you’re tired of reading dull books about dumb people, try this book. It’ll excite you and entertain you. Mr. Toastmaster…”

So there you have it. Follow my tips, and you’ll be able to create a moderately super fantastic Review.

If you have any additional advice, do yourself a favour and make your own damned blog!

Just kidding! Feel free to leave a comment or eight. Much appreciated.

For more information on how to write good speeches, go here: SPEECH TIPS.