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21 Memory System for
Speeches, Jokes, Dramatic Parts,
Poems, Articles and Books
Speeches
The best way to start approaching the memorisation of speeches is
to realise that in 90 per cent of cases they do not need to be
completely memorised. Realisation of this fact will instantaneous-
ly help you overcome most of the major problems experienced by
those who approach speech writing and speech making as a
memory function:
1 The enormous amount of time wasted in preparing a speech
for memorisation. The average time taken for the preparation and
presentation of a one-hour speech is, in total, one week. This
wasted time is spent writing and rewriting the speech again and
again to make it appropriate for memorisation. The remainder of
the wasted time is spent trying to ram the speech into the memory
by constant repetition.
2 The mental pressure and stress caused.
3 The physical stress resulting from item 2.
4 The relatively stilted presentation that results from a word-
for-word memorised presentation.
5 The boredom experienced by the audience who will 'sense'
that what they are being given is lineally memorised and rigid, and
not spontaneous and immediately relevant to them.
6 The aura of stress in both the speaker and the audience, both
of whom wait with apprehension for those horrible gaps and
pauses that occur when something has been forgotten.
7 The lack of eye contact between the speaker and the audience
because the speaker is 'looking inward' at the rigidly memorised
material and not outward to the audience.
The secret of making a good speech is not to remember the entire
speech word for word, but the main Key Words of your speech.
The entire process of preparation and memory/presentation can
be made both enjoyable and easy if you follow these simple steps:
1 Generally research the topic about which you are going to
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SPEECHES, JOKES, DRAMATIC PARTS, POEMS, ARTICLES AND BOOKS
speak, making recordings of ideas, quotations and references that
you think will prove relevant. These recordings should be done in
the Mind Map form as basically outlined in chapter 23 and as
expanded upon in Use Your Head and The Brain User's Guide.
2 Having completed your basic research, sit down and plan out,
using a Mind Map, the basic structure of your presentation.
3 With your basic structure in front of you, fill in any important
details, still in Mind Map form, so that you have completed a left-
and right-brain, associative, imagistic Mind Map Memory Note of
the entire speech. Usually this will contain no more than 100 words.
4 Practise making your speech from this completed outline. You
will find that, as you practise, the final order in which you wish to
present the speech will become increasingly clear, and you can
number the main areas and subtitles of your speech appropriately.
You will also find that, having completed the research and thought
in this way about the structure of the material, you will already
have automatically memorised the bulk of your speech. Initially, of
course, there will be points in it at which you will hesitate or get
lost, but with a little practice you will find that you not only know
your speech from beginning to end but know, at a much deeper
level than most speakers, the real associations, connections and
deeper structures of your speech. In other words, you will really
know what you are talking about. This point is especially impor-
tant, for it means that when you finally do speak to your audience,
you will have no fear of forgetting the word order of what you are
presenting. You will simply say what you have to say smoothly,
using the vocabulary appropriate for the moment and not getting
bogged down in a rigid succession of preordained sentence struc-
tures. You will thus become a creative and dynamic speaker.
5 As a backup safety system, you can always use one of the basic
Peg Systems. Select the ten, twenty or thirty Key Words that
completely summarise your speech and use the Basic Memory
Principles to connect your speech Key Words to the Peg System,
thus guaranteeing that even if, for a moment, you do get lost, you
will immediately be able to find yourself. Don't worry about any
little pauses that might occur in your speech. When an audience
senses that a speaker knows what he or she is talking about, a pause
is actually more positive than negative, for it makes it obvious to the
audience that the speaker is actually thinking and creating on the
platform. This adds to the enjoyment of listening, for it makes the
presentation far less formal and more personal and natural. Some
great speakers actually use the pause as a technique, maintaining
electrifying 'thinking silences' of up to as much as a full minute.
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