Make Your Point
Speaking and writing are different animals. The sooner I realize that the easier it will be to write what I am going to speak. The key to speaking is to make my point, tell a story, make my point, tell a story, make my point, tell a story, make my point – get the picture? I need to be sure that the main point is the one point that listeners walk away repeating in their heads.
“I am a writer.” This was the point I repeated over and over at my short speech that I gave to the SCWC in June of 2009. Repeating the same phrase every couple of paragraphs would be annoying in writing but worked with the speech. Between the repeating of that same statement, I wove in stories of my own writing experience and how I came to the place where I could comfortably declare that “I am a writer.”
The other night I gave another presentation about encouragement. My focus was my version of the story P.U.S.H. Although I managed to leave an impression with the audience it was not as sound as the one where I repeated the statement. A strong presentation leaves the listener with a focus. I lucked into that one.
I just finished reading a blog post over at the Happiness Project about summing up ideas. It gave me the idea that maybe coming up with these short, pointed phrases will make my presentations easier to create and more valuable to the audience.
What is your point? There may be a different way to get it across in writing and in presentations but the end result must be the same. You need to find a way to leave your reader or listener with a main point or points that will be easy to remember even after the lights have faded or the computer has been turned off.
