Have you ever taken a good look at the lighting in a jewelry store? Most of us don’t pay much attention to things like that, but jewelers do. They know that the best way to sell sparkly things is to emphasize the sparkle, the sizzle as it were, rather than the steak of prudent financial investment, so they install dozens of little pinpoint lights in the ceiling over the display cases. The stones, especially diamonds, reflect and refract the points of light back to the eye, and “voila”, they sparkle.
Speeches need to sparkle too. They need to be filled with small points that catch the ear and engage the mind and the imagination. Give your audience a crisp description that captures the essence of a person or place with one perfect adjective. Surprise them with twist on an idiom that sets them leaning one way, just before it whips them in another. Drop in a well timed pause that leaves a key word hanging in the air to be pondered.
The iron girders and bolts of fact and logic certainly have their place in the structure of your speech. They provide the strength and stability that hold the whole thing together. Emotion and enthusiasm provide the energy and resonance that will motivate change. But it’s the incandescent flashes of originality and insight that the logic supports that will really make the speech come alive for your audience.
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