Suggesting  Character Physically or Vocally

Have you told the story of Goldilocks and The Three Bears to a child lately? Well, why not? It’s great practice for public speaking. Because if you have, I’m willing to bet a nickel you put a little something into your vocal color when you said, ‘this porridge is too hot’ as Goldilocks or ‘someone’s been sleeping in my bed’ as Papa Bear.

Your adult audience really deserves no less. Just choose more interesting characters that are relevant to your message. Follow the progression here:

There should be a point to opening you mouth in front of an audience. If you want the audience to remember your point, you’ve got to tell a story. To make it powerful, it must be told with dialogue. (More on dialogue in another newsletter) Dialogue should suggest the character speaking. Not an impersonation of the character, unless you want to act or do stand up comedy. (A whole other skill set…)

This is a championship principle of speakers who stick in your memory.

The Goldilocks analogy is especially apt, because you can drop in a character-inflected bit of dialogue and then return to your true voice, which is really the ultimate connector to your audience. Much in the same way you would use a narrator’s voice as well as character voices if reading to a child. However, in the case of public speaking there is no ‘character’ you should play when speaking from your true voice between stories. I have been known to play the character of SpeakerMan, performing the speech rather than really being in the room with the audience, just talking to people.

But within the stories, the inflection you should put in your dialogue is a good compromise between acting full out and not enough variety in your material or delivery. The good news it doesn’t require you to be a brilliant performer. The suggestion of character can be very light, while it’s effect can be crucial to holding an audience’s attention.

In the physical doing of the dialogue, a bit of adjustment to show age,

a glance down to speak to an imaginary child,

a shrug to suggest an Italian taxi-driver’s indifference can light up your audience’s imagination.

Suggest elements of character and the amazing thing is, the audience will do the rest of the work for you, filling in the blanks so that a vibrant picture of the character appears in their minds. Little old ladies in your audience will come up to you afterwards and say things like: “I loved your speech! I had an aunt exactly like that. It felt like you were talking right to me.”

Can you picture them?

See, it works.

Next time: The Big Kahuna. Oh yeah…