Sorry this is late, folks. We’re working on an opera and everyone’s rushing around like mad things to keep it on timetable!
Do you remember your childhood days in front of the TV after school? Some of us watched Magpie, some of us watched Blue Peter. Personally, I was a Blue Peter child.
Do you remember the times when they’d show you how to make something and the catch-phrase that went with it? “Here’s one I prepared earlier”. Sadly, that doesn’t work with your presentations.
Well of course it does in one way – your audience doesn’t want to see you setting up or editing your slides at the last minute, nothing looks more amateur… but in this context what I mean is this…
Do you remember when you tried to do the things Blue Peter showed you how to do – and how much more complicated and difficult it was when you did it, compared to how they did it? That’s because you’ve got to do the dirty, tricky and boring bits which they skipped over with a simple “Here’s one I prepared earlier”. Did you feel cheated?
Probably.
So do audiences, if your presentation is too clean, too slick and too practiced.
If it’s over-practiced it will show.
Frankly, you’ll be as sterile and boring as if you’d just read the whole thing from a script (and you’d never do that, would you?!!?) ;) If you’re just delivering one you prepared earlier it can look to your audience that you’re just rolling out something from a production-line. No one likes to be just one-of-the-also-rans. People want to feel special. They want to feel that you’ve created something just for them.
The trick lies in finding the balance
On the one hand, your technical wizardry is all beautifully hidden – so that you can skip around your slides if you need to because you know what number slides shows what diagramme – and so that your video and sound works effortlessly, first time… of course you’representation need those things. In theatre (and other places!) they have a saying that the show is like a swan: cool, calm and collected (serene even) on the surface, but paddling like hell underneath. Let that be your presentation mantra for the technical stuff. Let no one see you paddle, let them see you glide, technically effortlessly through your presentation.
On the other hand, if your actual words have been chosen days ago in the sterility of your office, typed out, read out, retyped, re-read, printed, re-read and probably memorised, how much ‘life’ do you think those words will have in the room? Words are living, breathing things that grow. You can kill them, make them sterile, if you have them too tied down. There are worse things to be than boring, but not many! :)
What we do – and what we recommend – is that you have your key words very carefully defined but only your key words. The actual words you say are semi-improvised.
That doesn’t mean that you don’t rehearse! What it means is that when you rehearse you don’t necessarily use exactly the same words each time… and that if you develop a script by repetition then so be it… that’s not a problem. What we don’t want is for you to have your script ready before you start. Only professional script-writers (and only talented ones at that!) can write things down in a way that makes them sound realistic when they’re spoken.
Trust me on this – it’s based upon experience!
Have you ever heard of “brain dumping”? This is a very simple technique where you simply write as fast as you possibly can, thus bypassing writers block very easily. Essentially, you just have to write as fast as possible, breaking through that inner wall that keeps you from transcribing what you need to. As you write down this content, the spelling, grammar and punctuation will not even be considered during this process. Once you write everything down, you will be surprised by how much content you actually have once you begin transcribing what you have said. Your goal is to write down everything, then restructure it, and then, finally, proofread what you have written.
Hi aspigadiops – sorry it’s taken so long to reply! I’ve no idea why we didn’t say something earlier
Yeah, we use freewriting ourselves – and mindmapping – both great ways to get the first ideas onto the page.