It is often said that it is essential to have a knowledge of your audience before you can deliver a successful public speech. Good advice but how is it to be implemented. The fact remains that you cannot draft a successful public speech unless you know your audience and, more importantly, what that audience wants. The advice is crucial. The word public in public speaking means that an audience is an essential part of the equation otherwise you could just spend your life talking to your shaving mirror. But how can you possibly assess the wishes of hundreds of people who you have never met? The answer is you cannot. Do not even try. An audience, particularly a large one, is a shapeless mass of humanity. Before contemplating what you will say give that shapeless mass a form - give it a personality. The best way to do this is to create a person in your mind. It could be someone you know and who might be the sort who will sit in your audience. Alternatively make someone up. If it is an imagined person give him or her a name. Imagine their likes and dislikes, what will make them laugh and what might interest them. Immediately the drafting of your speech will become easier. The greater visual impact you can give that person the more successful you will be. If necessary give them a face - a whole "mug shot." Have faith in your knowledge of human nature that you can establish this person who will accurately represent your audience. After all if you were addressing a group of doctors you would not give them the persona of the unemployed son of one your friends who has a taste for heavy metal music and urban anarchy. (A few doctors may share these tastes but you are playing to the majority in your audience!) When you have created your representative person you must now ask the most important question of all. What is in your speech for them? What is the hook to get them interested and what is the satisfaction that your speech is going to give them. They are not there just to hear a flow of words. Those words must do something for them - entertain, inform or persuade. Can you say that your speech will successfully meet some or all of those needs? Your imaginary person is important from the beginning to the end of the process - not just when you are creating and editing your speech. Continue to keep him or her in your mind as you deliver your speech. You may even respond to the sorts of questions that are forming in that person's mind. The better you get at this technique the sooner you will have regular bookings and be making money from public speaking. In time you will gather a group of these representatives who will help you identify with different audiences. There is one last thing you must do regularly to enhance your skill in this technique. At the end of each event use all the feedback you have received to refine the characterisation of your cast members. Be careful that you have not imprinted your own feelings and prejudices into the minds of your representatives. Keep them fresh by updating them. Lastly this technique of visualising a large group as an individual was graphically demonstrated towards the end of the current hit film, "The King's Speech." At the time that King George V1 is about to address the British Empire, comprising roughly one quarter of all the people then living on the planet, he is recommended by his voice coach, "Imagine you are speaking to me. Speak to me as a friend."
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