Public speaking tips for when you don’t do this for a living

Everybody gets nervous. That part doesn’t go away, and it doesn’t need to. A little adrenaline is what makes you sound awake instead of flat.

What turns nerves into panic is not knowing the talk well enough. When you’re unsure what comes next, your brain spends the whole time hunting for the next line, and that hunting is what feels like fear.

So “be prepared” means something specific:

• You can say the first thirty seconds without looking. That’s when your heart is pounding hardest, and it’s the part you want on autopilot.
• You know the order of your ideas. Not every word. The order. If you can count your main points off on your fingers, you can’t get truly lost.
• You’ve said the whole thing out loud at least three times. Reading it silently doesn’t count. Your mouth trips on sentences your eyes glide right past.

The morning of, keep it boring. Eat what you normally eat, sleep the way you normally sleep, and don’t make the day of the talk the day you try something new. Right before you stand up, breathe out slowly, longer than you breathed in. It helps more than it sounds like it should.

A talk isn’t about what you want to say. It’s about what the room needs to hear, and the same words land very differently depending on who’s listening.

Before you write anything, work out:

• Who’s there. Ages, how well they know you, how well they know the person you’re talking about.
• What they already know. Don’t explain the groom to his own family.
• What they should walk away with. One feeling or one idea. Not five.
• What they won’t want to hear. The ex, the inside joke, the hard part of someone’s last year.

Then check the room itself if you can. How big is it, where do people sit, is there a mic, is there a podium you can set your notes or phone on? A reception with a handheld mic and a DJ is a different speech than a chapel with a fixed podium. If you can stand in the spot before the day, do it. It takes one unknown off the list.

The most common way a talk goes wrong is trying to say too much. Every extra point makes the others weaker, because a room can only hold so much at once.

The test is simple. Can you say what your talk is about in one sentence? “My brother is the most loyal person I know, and she’s lucky to have him.” “Faith is something you practice, not something you have.” If you can’t get it down to one sentence, you’re not ready to write yet. You’re still deciding what the talk is.

Then pick three or four points that hold that sentence up. A fifteen minute talk can carry four. A three minute toast carries one story and a wish.

When you find a great story that doesn’t hold up the main idea, cut it. Save it for another day. That’s the hardest part of writing any talk, and it’s the part that makes the biggest difference.

The first thirty seconds decide whether the room leans in or settles back. Spend them on something worth hearing.

Openings that work: a short story that drops people into a moment. A question you want them to think about. One specific detail about the person you’re there for.

What doesn’t work: telling everyone you didn’t want to speak, that you’re nervous, or that you only got asked on Tuesday. It feels honest. What it does is tell the room to lower their expectations, and it spends your best thirty seconds on the one thing you don’t want them thinking about.

Same goes for mistakes. If you skip a line or trip over a word, keep going. The room doesn’t know what you meant to say. Apologizing is the only thing that tells them.

People argue about this one, and I’ve landed here: write the whole thing out once. Then don’t read it.

Writing it out is how you figure out what you’re saying. Sentences that sound fine in your head fall apart on paper, and it’s better to find that out at the kitchen table than at the podium.

Reading a full script up front goes wrong in predictable ways, though. Your chin drops. Your voice goes flat, because you’re reading instead of talking. And every time you look up, you lose your place, so you stop looking up. I’ve done this more times than I’d like to admit.

So once it’s written, cut it down. One thought per card. A card should hold enough to remind you of the next thing, not the next thing word for word. If a line has to be exact, like a name, a date, a scripture or a quote, give it its own card and read it straight. Nobody minds you reading a name.

Practice is where most of the improvement happens, and most people do it wrong. They read it over silently a few times and call it rehearsed.

What works better:

• Out loud, standing up. Standing changes your breathing and your pace, and your mouth catches the clunky sentences.
• In the conditions you’ll give it. If you’ll be holding a mic, hold something in one hand. If there’s a podium, practice at a counter about the same height. If it’s outside, practice somewhere with a little noise.
• Timed, every time. Most people speak around 130 words a minute, and faster when they’re nervous. So a 400 word draft runs about three minutes, and it’ll feel longer up there.
• With fewer words each run. First run, the full text. Second run, only the first few words of each sentence. Third run, only the first letter of each word. By the fourth, the cards are just a nudge and the talk is coming from you. I wrote up how that works in more detail.

Don’t try to memorize the whole thing word for word. A memorized speech is fragile: lose one line and everything after it can go with it. Memorize the first thirty seconds and the last line cold, and let your cards carry the middle.

Almost everyone speeds up when they’re nervous. It’s the most common way a talk that went fine in practice goes wrong, and the fix is simple. Tell yourself to slow down, on the card, right where you’ll need it.

Mark the moments that need room. After the funny line, so you wait for the laugh instead of talking over it. Before the emotional line. Before the ask at the end. Write the note right there: slow down, breathe, look at Sarah.

You won’t remember to do it up there, but you will read it. In PalmCue, anything in square brackets, like [pause] or [look at Sarah], shows up small and dim, so it reads as a note to you and not a line to say.

The time you’re given is the time you take. A toast that runs short is rarely the problem. The one that runs ten minutes is the one people remember.

If your practice run is long, cut a whole story, not a sentence here and there. Trimming words saves seconds. Cutting a story saves a minute.

A speech timer with green, yellow and red lights will tell you where you stand while you practice.