Poets are really creative, they can sit and write a whole poem on a leaf falling from the tree. The way that leaf giggles with the wind and bends itself to the right and left until it touches the soft bed of sand. A poet can write hundreds of words only to describe how his lover was combing her hair. Now just like a poet a Public Speaker must also be very creative in explaining things with the right choice of words. One can either say that I am very Happy today or I am dancing on the 7th sky with joy today, the latter helps the audience understand your level of joy better.
Express your emotions at your best:
When you talk about your or anyone’s emotions, try to project it in a way that the audience can exactly feel the way you or the person felt at that time. This can only be achieved when you explain it by choosing the right words with the right amount of intensity in them. For example, if you have lost your very close friend, instead of saying he left me broke you can go with some explanation like, “I have felt as if someone came and chopped a part of my flesh while I was alive and I felt pain in every cell of my body, I always considered him a part of me and now I was feeling incomplete.”
In the same way, when you want to talk about a horrific night, you can use the words to explain the horror you felt e.g. “the night was dark, everyone was asleep, even my fluffy cat Oscar was lost in dreams, it was very silent, so silent that I was able to hear the tick of the clock” and go on….
We can only let people see the world inside our heads by choosing the right words.
Make the audience see the characters:
Many of the times we talk about different characters in our stories, those can be our friends, family, or anyone we met. Now it is obvious that the audience hasn’t seen those people you are referring to unless they are famous personalities. Try to make your audience see them by giving details about the character, “like once upon a time there was an old man in a beautiful village where there was serenity everywhere, the old man had a long winter white beard, milky eyes, and an angelic smile. He would often walk across the village in his unsteady gaze” and go on… Now this statement has created an image of the character in the minds of people and would connect to your story overall. A great storyteller does not only tell a story but makes the audience see it in their minds exactly or near to what is in the speaker’s mind.
Dramatize:
We have often seen poets dramatizing pain and misery, the reason they do that is that audience doesn’t like ordinary, ordinary is boring for the audience. That’s why in movies we see a lot of exaggeration and we often wonder why they do that? Why do they shoot such unrealistic scenes? Do they think the audience is a fool? No, they are well aware of the audience, they put millions into creating such scenes because the audience wants to see something extraordinary. Now for a speaker, this information is very useful and he/she must add some drama to his/her content, and by drama I mean that a speaker should add intensity and excitement in his speeches by adding more details in the content, using powerful body language and an appropriate voice variation. The blend of this can excite your audience to listen to you. Moreover, a speaker should never forget that a monotonous and average speech can never move the people, but he/she should use wisdom to determine the amount of drama that needs to be added because an overdose can also become a turn-off.
Ordinary is boring for the audience
Magnify with Metaphors:
Metaphors are like cherry on the cake, It not only adds beauty but makes your content more appealing. Using metaphors is like you are borrowing the attributes of one thing to explain the other e.g. you are explaining the beauty of a girl, you can go like, “She was one the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, her eyes were deeper than the deepest ocean, her hair was darker than the darkest night, and her smile flickered across her face like a hologram.” Now when the speaker uses such metaphors it magnifies the context speaker wants to deliver and also sounds great. You can search for metaphors on google or can create your own by giving a little thought about what is the closest thing that can describe perfectly the character or thing I want to put light on.
The best way to start of is to find the best metaphor for yourself. Yes, a metaphor that can be closest to your personality. It can be anything like a mountain, sun, snowflake, or anything.
Explain with Analogies:
Human minds are wired in a way that it looks for a reference point from its subconscious to remember or understand new concepts. How do you remember someone’s name? Do you search for another person with the same name already installed in your subconscious to make that a reference? How do you remember new routes? You look for places and signs for reference and install only that in your subconscious.
Likewise, there are often few complex ideas that are very difficult to elaborate and if the audience is completely new to those then the possibility is that they will not be able to digest them. Analogies come to the rescue, in this case, the analogy is a comparison that you make between two objects or their systems based on the similarity e.g. if a speaker has to talk about how to make new habits, he can use the analogy of going to the gym because most of the people have experienced that in their lives and it can be a reference point to understand the complex phenomena of how habits are formed and can be changed.
Always remember, a great speaker is unconventional in his approach to content. He does not only convey his message but conveys it in a way that it feels like magic and sounds like a melody. A speaker thinks like a poet and delivers like an artist, where the canvas is the audiences’ mind.
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