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Some say balloon animals are the purest art form. Others…do not say that. (Source)
You've got a good idea of who's in your audience. Great.
Now—what are you going to say to them? We don't suggest staring blankly. Most audiences will only stick around for about five seconds of that. If you want to keep them around a little longer, you better have something significant and interesting to say.
This brings us back to the first of Cicero's five canons of persuasion: invention. Remember that? It's the phase in which you're deciding on how to express your main idea and looking for the materials that will help you support that main idea.
In this lesson, we'll focus on the first part: expressing your main idea. This seems sort of like a one-step process, doesn't it? You already know the subject of your speech and its primary purpose, after all: you're giving a demonstration speech on balloon animals. Main idea: here's how to make balloon animals.
Simple as that, right? Well, okay—if you're giving a how-to demonstration on balloon animals, maybe it is as simple as that.* But in most cases, you're going to want to work a little harder on crafting your main idea.
*To any balloon animal artists who might be reading this: Please understand we're not claiming it's simple to make balloon animals. We understand you've put a lot of work into your art, and we commend you for it.
CALCULATE YOUR ANGLE
Recall what Scott Berkun had to say in the chapter of Confessions that you read earlier in this unit: "People really want insight. They want an angle." (62)
Well, we're people, and we can back up Berkun's claim. We do want insight, and we do want an angle.
So how do you get those things? How do you make sure your speech is interesting and insightful, like a balloon animal, and not just a boring, amorphous blob of generality, like a regular old, round balloon?
Let's see what Chris Anderson has to say about that.
The Chris Anderson we're talking about here is a curator for the TED conference, which means he knows a lot about what makes a TED Talk successful. What he has to say about this applies to speeches beyond those that will ultimately become TED Talks, of course.
Watch the video "TED's secret to great public speaking."
Guiding Light: It Ain't Just a Defunct Soap Opera
Guiding Light: It Ain't Just a Defunct Soap Opera
Let's take one more look at the four guidelines for public speaking that Anderson shared in his video:
Focus on one major idea.
Give people a reason to care.
Build your idea with familiar concepts.
Make your idea worth sharing.
Because this lesson is all about the main idea of a speech, we'd like to direct your attention to that first guideline: "Focus on one major idea."
Anderson distilled a few of the major ideas behind several TED Talks, including:
"Creativity is key to our kids' future."
"Building from bamboo is beautiful."
"People are more than a single identity."
We want you to notice a few things about each of those:
They're short.
They're easy to understand.
They're clear and definite (as opposed to unclear and vague).
They're neither extremely broad nor extremely specific.
Let's see if we can't come up with a sentence like this for the speech you read in the last lesson—Ursula Le Guin's "A Left-Handed Commencement Address."
Read a bit about the main idea here.
That got it down to a few short paragraphs, but if were to distill the main idea even more, into a sentence, what might it be? Le Guin probably had her own main idea in mind when she wrote it, and ours may not be the same, but what about "If our future lies with women, then you're the future"?
Do you best to express you main idea in a short, easy-to-understand, clear, and definite sentence as soon as possible. Spending time on this at the beginning of the process will give you a guiding light—or, as Chris Anderson called it, a "throughline" that will help you as you prepare, craft, and deliver your speech.
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