People used to insist upon requesting that I do readings at their weddings. If I hadn’t loved those people I would have told them to stick it. Racing heart, pounding blood in my head, dry mouth, shaking hands…

To this day I despise the Song of Solomon because it instantly makes me want to throw up.

I wish you luck. Better you than me.

I used to get that way, but I mostly don’t anymore. I mean, I still get the nervous pangs, but I mostly realize that… well, I kind of don’t care. That sounds callow, right? Like, “Eh, who gives a shit?” But really, that liberates me. To say, “What does this really matter?” It’s not like my life depends on it. Nobody’s life depends on it. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to do a proper job, it just means I’m not going to get all worked up over it because the stakes are pretty low. As long as I don’t shit my pants in front of a Live Studio Audience, ideally I’ll be okay.

Though this will be recorded for posterity, so all y’all will conceivably be able to see it.

That’s actually a little terrifying.

– c.

I have some experience in this mattter:

As a larper, and as a stage performer, i know that there are things that you can do to maximize your impact as a public speaker.

1) If you have an opportunity to gauge the room beforehand, try to do so. Find out how much of your voice you will need to hit the back wall of the room. Use that much voice and no less.

2) Do not turn away from your audience at any point in your presentation. If people cannot see your mouth moving, they will lose up to 35% of your words.

3) Do not shift from foot to foot. find something specific to do with your hands if you can.
If you gesture, make a full strong gesture. this is so that you can be seen by people in the back and half-gestures impress no one.

4) Do not lock your knees. You will pass out. Be careful what you eat beforehand, err on the side of a light meal. If you will be under hot lights, DO NOT CONSUME DAIRY under any circumstance.

5) Keep your notes to one 3″ by 5″ card. fumbling through papers wrecks your momentum. Honestly, since you KNOW your material all you need are a few carefully chosen spur words. Write these words in marker so you can see them up to a few feet away, so you won’t be squinting at them while trying to get back on track.

6) Plan how you will approach your short talk if your powerpoint presentation goes tits up. If your talk only involves 20 discrete pieces of data for the presentation, discard the powerpoint end of things entirely.

7) Approach this as if it was a one man show that you will never have the opportunity to perform again. A show you really would like to do and have fun with, a show with that “Chuck Wendig” character in it who is an energetic maniac.

Speed kills and ruins diction besides. If you think you’re going too slow. Slow down some more.

9) if you wish to study the science of public speaking, possibly for later engagements, YOUTUBE makes this crazy easy. I recommend watching stage actors (Eric Bogosian particularly) and poets do their thing. (Taylor Mali is a favorite) and one can learn interesting rhetorical tricks from watching evangelists do their thing.

10) Some people approach performing from two different directions. In my former improv group we were sort of split between people who wanted to pound a few mountain dews before a performance, and people who needed two stiff belts. That really all depends on your level of performance anxiety. Me i always wanted extra energy. I could already be uninhibited on stage. YMMV.

Also: The lower register of your voice tends to carry much better than the upper register.
and if you drop anything on stage, pick it up immediately. Otherwise, your audience will stare at it until you do.

Pete:

Great pro-tips, dude. Thanks.

I might need a cup of coffee before I get up there.

Or whiskey.

Or amyl nitrate poppers to loosen my sphincter.

…

What?

So far, I’m in line with some of this. Cards, no papers. Prep in case ppt goes down. Will be facing toward them the whole time.

Good stuff.

– c.

You know, I don’t get to do a lot of it, a couple times a year or so. Crowd size has varied and I find, personally, that that makes a bit of a difference. I like small and medium sized crowds. Also, I find that proximity to the audience matters, as well. When I feel a part of the crowd, I find I’m a lot more at ease. When I feel like I’m on display, my hands shake uncontrollably and the stuttering begins.

One oddity has been that I find that I really suck at speaking in public if I’m either too prepared or not prepared at all. There’s a sweet spot there where I’ve looked things over, am familiar with the talking points but have a lot of wiggle room for anecdotes and ad-libbing. It allows my brain to be just a couple steps ahead of my mouth, rather than waiting patiently for my mouth to catch up or being desperately behind.

I think one of the worst public speaking moments was when I was a best man at a wedding. My speech sucked ass and I fell back on the worst cliches imaginable. I regret the speech to this day. It’s probably just coincidence, but I’m not that guy’s best man anymore.

Next weekend, I have to paint while talking in front of people during a demo and slide show – which I imagine will be a lot like tapping your head and rubbing your belly at the same time.

One oddity has been that I find that I really suck at speaking in public if I’m either too prepared or not prepared at all. There’s a sweet spot there where I’ve looked things over, am familiar with the talking points but have a lot of wiggle room for anecdotes and ad-libbing. It allows my brain to be just a couple steps ahead of my mouth, rather than waiting patiently for my mouth to catch up or being desperately behind.

Very much my experience, too. If I go overboard in prep or thinking about it, I can lose my place and then simply be lost. But if I keep it as much in my head as on paper, then I’m not anchored to any one thing. I can stick and move.

Good call.

And the wedding thing — that sucks, Steven. Funny how stuff like that happens.

In case anybody doesn’t know Steven’s work in the gaming industry –

http://www.stevenbelledin.com/gallery/

Check out that sweet-ass majesty, yo.

And we’re related!

– c.

To make sure you can be heard, pick a point at the back of the room and “aim” your voice for it. The X of an EXIT sign is always a good, high-visibility choice. Ideally, you’ll want to make sparing eye contact with the audience as you talk, but always keep that point in mind while speaking to make sure that point can hear you. This also helps with the ‘facing the audience’ thing. If you’re too nervous to look folks in the eye, that X is there for you and isn’t going to judge you.

Unless, you know, you suck.

I know you won’t, though. Go over your talking points, knock back a swallow of whiskey, and kick their asses. Verbally.

Since I’m basically you without the beard and with an angry uterus, I’ll tell you how I go about it. You know your material and you know you can talk about stuff you love, so don’t sweat the notes. Go over a bullet point list of things you want to talk about, then don’t over think it. You want it to be organic.

Remember that everyone there is wanting to hear what you have to say, so drop your shoulders.

Imagine that they’re all going to laugh at every joke, especially when you say cock knobler, douche weasel, and jizz pistol. And if you aren’t planning on saying those, then I don’t know what to tell you about that group of nuns.

Knock em dead and have fun! (Then make the obnoxious person in the room – there’s always one – buy you a drink. Oh, and prepare a pithy comeback to a stupid heckle, that’s always empowering.)

Ye gods, if people are heckling my game-story talk, I’ll kick them in the neck.

I’m so tempted to just open my speech with the phrase, “Jizz Pistol.”

And then never address it again.

– c.

Addtional tips for hecklers:

Never ever dare the heckler to come up onstage and do better than you. As long as you control the mic, you win.

Why?
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a special guest in the audience tonight. My Biological father is here tonight, let’s give him a big hand. Seeing as how he took the night off from sucking dick down at the bus station to come down and join us tonight…”

I’m one of those oddballs who enjoys public speaking. I don’t really have any tips for it, because I was always comfortable doing it. (I was prone to horrific bouts of stage fright when I was a musician. Go figure.)

I’d say just have fun. Size up your audience and don’t be afraid to riff on something that might come up.

So, PAX, right?

We’re expecting our usual crowd of say… five people… And they start coming in. Now it’s a hundred, now two, now they’re cutting it off at three.

I’m pretty sure I gained a pound for every person who sat down and now I’m SURE I look like Jabba the Hutt in earrings and a Maschine Zeit polo. (It’s a big polo.) ((This is how I handle stress badly, I get fatter in my mental image of myself. Instant body dysmorphia! It’s awesome!!!))

But see, I too used to perform on stage all the time. (I was in a children’s choir that used to perform at the Academy and such all the time. Hundreds of people in the crowd watching yours truly sing The Pieta in La Magnificat and so on.)

Anyhow, they taught us kids a trick so as we didn’t throw up on ourselves. It works about ten times out of nine.

Picture the crowd naked but in black socks. This is especially handy with gamers because they are usually as unhealthy in their build as I am and thus less threatening naked. And block socks… well… black socks are just plain funny.*

300 gamers naked in black socks and I lost 300 mental pounds in an instant. It was great, the panel was great, and I didn’t throw up on my lap top or eat David because I mistook him for a doughnut or something. Try it.

*Sad side effect to this mental training: I cannot have sex with a person wearing only socks. I start laughing and cannot control myself. This has led to more than one uncomfortable situation in my adult life. Please, laugh at my pain here. I am.

I have a fear that picturing everybody 95% naked is sure to tip me over the edge. Maybe if I pictured them all in like, Thunderdome gear or something. Or clown makeup.

Er, no, clown makeup would be worse, wouldn’t it?

Maybe as children. Little kids.

Or donkeys.

Yeah. Donkeys.

An army of donkeys.

Mute but for their braying desire to hear me speak.

– c.

When you get up there, right before you talk, quickly look for a friendly face in the audience (preferably a child, if your audience has one), and smile. The kid will nearly automatically smile back, and that relaxes you.

Use the nervous energy to get into your talk. And make sure you talk about things you believe in and care about, because that will carry through to the audience whether or not it’s something they believe in and care about.

Finish early.

And bleh on me for not closing a tag. :/

Well wishes!

I have no advice as I suck at speaking in groups larger than two. Although, one time, when I couldn’t escape the job and realised halfway through how dull I was, I perked up and made it joke after joke, figuring I couldn’t make it worse. I wouldn’t recommend that method if you boss is in attendance but people still talk about that speech of mine.

Good luck – or, if I’m too late, er happy friday!

Thanks, Caf, and thanks all!

@Kyle –

You say, “finish early.”

Why for? To leave room for Q&A, or to just get the hell off stage and get ‘er done?

– c.

You got tons of solid advice on this already, so I’ll just share something that helped me when I used to sing – they are fucking there to see you. Chances are your getting the jittery-almost-have-to-pee feeling right before showtime. Find somewhere quiet and give one good scream – the barbaric yawp, or whatever you want to call it. Let all that shit out into your one scream. Then go be a rockstar, baby.

This is one of the few places where I can give my pro tip, and people will not need a lengthy explanation:

Play a super-charismatic character who is giving your speech.

Seriously. Come on, most of us have played the con man/femme fatale at one point or another in our gaming lives. Or NPC’ed the super-smooth evil CEO. Just give the speech the way that guy would. I find that this gives me license to be much more personable than I normally would, and provides me the emotional distance I need to not freeze up. After all, if they start laughing, they’re laughing at Jack, not at me.

Of course, I’ve never had a problem with public speaking or stage fright. It’s small talk that always freaks me out. But, I’ve found that putting on a character works for that situation, too, so long as I’m not talking to someone I actually want to get to know.

Half my life is talking in front of people, or teaching them how to do it themselves.

The super short version:

Have you ever been at at talk where the speaker was just terrible? Like… terrible?

Was it fun for you?

No, of course not. It sucked balls. It was incredibly uncomfortable and you spent the entire talk willing lightning to strike you both or for the speaker to get their balance or SOMEthing. You were willing them to succeed. (Didn’t work, but still, you tried.)

That’s the one thing that I tell everyone to remember when they get up in front of a group to talk: no one wants you to fail, or in any way do poorly, because everyone is a selfish bastard, and your discomfort would be uncomfortable for THEM.

**Everyone** is rooting for you. The audience is your Best. Friend.

Doyce –

Man, that is a cool piece of advice. A new perspective, actually.

Nice.

– c.

Finish early for both reasons, actually. If people have questions, then you want to focus on that because you’ll directly address the things they care about. Participation lets the folks in the audience be awesome and get specific.

Even when you don’t have Q&A, or when that ends early, nobody minds when you take less of their time than anticipated. I don’t mean finishing in only 10 minutes when you have an hour (unless the focus will turn to a 50-minute Q&A), but when was the last time you griped because somebody wrapped up an hour talk in forty-five minutes?

I can’t think of any particular tips, because most of my public speaking I learned on the fly as a LARPer, and many times I could just hide behind my character (“I’m not the one fucking up, it’s my PC.”) I think nowadays I take this weird image people have of me (which I talk about in “Micro-Celebrity” over at eddyfate.com) and put that forth to hide behind: people come to talk to an eloquent, polite, well-spoken game designer, so I should present that image to people, even if I don’t feel particularly awesome. I can always go back to my hotel room and feel like I’m about to throw up, but right now I have to put on a show.

It also helps that I have to fucking CONSTANTLY pay attention to my speaking speed, so I’m always a little distracted when I’m talking.

All that being said, I don’t personally think I’m a fantastic public speaker — just an adequate one. So, YMMV.

I took a speech class fairly recently cuz I realize how bad I am at public speaking. I think the most useful thing I learned was to remember that the kind of communication you are talking about is just that: communication. It isn’t a performance. No one is grading you. That helped me relax a tad.

If the audience is goodlooking, then go with the old “imagine them in their underwear” deal. Masturbating will give you something specific to do with your hands (one of the suggestions above). Plus, you can say “How do you like my Powerpoint now?”

Danny Boy makes me laugh. So hard I have to change my drawers.

– c.

Having done the public speaking thing for more years than I care to admit, I figured out long ago that not everyone prepares the same way. I know my material well enough in advance that when I’m out there, doing it without looking at notes is a snap. I enjoy improvisation (the jazz musician in me) and just have fun with it when I’m up there. Again, not everybody is comfortable with that. Go with what makes you comfortable. Find your own groove. Your own personal rhythm. And try not to think too much.

One small bit of relaxation I sometimes do before going out is: I yawn. Force it at first, it will turn real soon enough. Just one big deep yawn. The muscles that are forced to relax when you yawn will be nice and tension free when you hit the podium. But like I said, most importantly, do your thing, your way.

It’s amazing and serendipitous that I was reading Cracked right before this, because it was an article that referenced the fight-or-flight response, and how the wires sometimes get crossed. So while you’re trying to tell a girl how pretty she is, or talk to a room full of people about a topic near and dear to your heart, your body’s telling you “HOLY SHIT! A LION! RUN!”

So my advice to you is to roll with it. If your body’s telling you the room’s full of lions and you should make like a tree and get the fuck out of there, you need to tell your body that the room is full of nice vegan lions like Lambert.

Or, y’know, smoke a big, fat joint right before cue time. Whatever.

I used to get extremely nervous before a reading, and I rarely hosted without a drink always at hand, but outside of the poetry scene, I’ve found being confident that I know what the hell I’m talking about makes it a lot easier. It’s only tricky when you’re trying to bullshit people.

I trust you know your shit, and as such, will give a kick-ass workshop.

Just in case, though, I’m bringing some tomatoes and a flask of bourbon.

I make people hate me, because I’m one of those freaks that doesn’t hate Public Speaking. At all. In fact, I love it. Yeah, even when my mouth gets dry and I have to sip water, even when I mis-pronounce words, or it’s a funeral and I’m all weepy. Has never scared me the eensiest bit. THAT SAID – here are my tips, that I didn’t see above.

I have *never* advised the naked thing. It’s just never worked for me, or anyone I know. Then again, if army of donkeys helps you, go for it. Maybe xombies?
The bit about the lower register of your voice and going SLOW are gold. Slow, slow, sloooooooow. No, really. Consciously slow the fuck down. See, we don’t think we’re speeding up when we’re nervous. That audience? They can. My voice coach used to tell us ‘The audience can smell fear. ‘
Then he’d tell us that if we started going flat, they’d smell our fear and swarm the stage and tear us to pieces. And he’d let them. And laugh.

He was a bastard, but shit we won a lot of competitions under him. ANYWAY.
One thing I can think of is the power of the pause. A weighty pause, a Hemingway sort of Pause, or maybe the Pause of the Evangelist. Shit, those guys give good pauses. Gets me all hot. Let it have its own presence, its own weight. Actually practice this, if you can. It will help you kill the dreaded Um. You know what I mean. The Um, the Ah, the Err. Record your voice and every time you hear yourself Um, have someone punch you in the balls. I mean it.

Leave enough time to recover your lower register before the workshop, though.

Try engaging the audience as much as possible… it keeps them focused on what you are saying. The more you talk AT them the more they may lose interest. Ask the audience questions that pertain to what you are presenting and encourage questions during your presentation.

Well, if you count speaking to a room of 30 teens multiple times a week on a myriad of issues, from general chatting to a psycho-educational lecture series then, yeah. I do that.

Best advice; play to your strengths. I can say that I’ve heard you public speak one time, your Dad’s eulogy. I have heard you speak plenty. You do best speaking passionately, as you did in his case, and most often speaking extemporaneously you are the bomb and seem to sometimes surprise yourself.

The more chill you seem, the better you will be received. The more ease you put your audience at, the more they will enjoy it.

Encourage them to ask your opinion, then spout it humorously authoritatively–you excel at that. Then, at the end, tell them that you “empowered them to ask questions” and “tell the story” of your presentation.

If that fails, imagine me naked. Works every time.

Luck,
K

Thanks, @Keith. Actually, imagining you naked, I have to imagine you almost look like you have clothes on. You are a hirsute man, primitive with fur.

Actually, thanks @Everybody. You are, as usual, a brain trust of truly terrible (in the best way) minds.

– c.