REMEMBERING RHYTHM

A good speech should attract and hold listeners as a magnet attracts and holds iron filings. Here are four simple techniques mat can turn your words into music in an audience’s ears:

• the rule of three
• parallel sentences
• alliteration
• repetition.

Let’s take each in turn.

The rule of three

Three is a magic number. People love to hear speakers talk to the beat of three. The effect of three words, three phrases or three sentences is powerful and memorable:

Marriage is the meeting of two minds ... of two hearts ... of two souls.

May you be blessed with happiness that grows ... with love that deepens ... and with peace that endures.

We wish you fun and excitement for today ... hopes and dreams for tomorrow ... and love and happiness forever.

Parallel sentences

Sentences that are parallel add a rhythmic beauty that helps an audience anticipate and follow your thoughts:

Marriage is a celebration of love. Marriage is a celebration of life. Marriage is a celebration of joy. As you walk through life, hold hands and never let go.

Alliteration

The recurrence of sounds and syllables, usually at the beginning of words, can help create just the right mood. Your speech will become special and spellbinding:

Water your garden with friendship and faith and favour. And then watch it grow. You deserve a garden of love.

Repetition

If there is anything that is almost guaranteed to make an audience break out into spontaneous applause it is a repetition of strong, emotive words:

I will love you for ever ... and ever ... and ever!

However, use the wrong words and it will fall flat. How does this sound?

I will think the world of you indefinitely ... indefinitely ... indefinitely!

It doesn’t work, does it?

KEEPING IT FLOWING

Once you have scripted a series of beautiful, funny and moving stories and reminiscences you will need to link them to form a satisfying whole. There are a number of techniques that can help you do this. Have you noticed how entertainers, politicians and TV presenters move easily and unobtrusively from one topic to another? Like them, you can make your presentation flow smoothly and gracefully from beginning to end by making use of a few of these simple devices:

• bridges
• triggers
• rhetorical questions
• flashbacks
• identifiers
• lists
• pauses
• physical movement
• quotations, anecdotes and jokes.

Let us briefly consider each in turn.

A bridge is a word that alerts an audience that you are changing direction or moving to a new thought:

And he took the job in London. Meanwhile other developments were taking place ...

That was bad enough. However, there was even worse to come ...

So that’s how Ed met Sophie. But romance didn’t blossom right away ...

A trigger is a repetition of the same word or phrase to link one topic with another.

That was what Bill was like at school. Now I’ll tell you what he was like at college ...

A rhetorical question – a question which does not require an answer – is another useful device to help keep a speech flowing.

That’s what makes our marriage so happy. So what advice can I offer to the newlyweds? ...

Some members of the audience will know both the bride and the groom very well while others may only know one of them. Asking a rhetorical question is also an excellent way of telling people something while not insulting the intelligence of those already in the know.

What can I tell you about a man who won the school prize for economics, represented the county at hockey and passed his driving test at the sixth attempt?

You can also throw in other background facts casually and inoffensively:

... and passed his driving test at the sixth attempt? Sally passed first time.

A flashback is a sudden shift to the past to break what seems to be a predictable narrative:

She was born in ...

She went to school at ...

She got her first job with ...(yawn, yawn!)

It would have been far more interesting to have provided an unexpected flashback link, such as:

Today she is the attractive, sophisticated lady you see before you. But ten years ago she wasn’t like that ...

An identifier is a word or phrase that keeps cropping up throughout a speech to help tie everything together. It also reinforces the audience’s group identity.

Look at our [not the] beautiful bride ...
We [not I] wish them well ...

A list is a very simple way of combining apparently unrelated stories.

I remember three occasions when Tim got into trouble at school ...

But don’t rely too heavily on lists because catalogue of events soon become extremely tedious to listen to.

Pausing will show an audience that you have finished a section of your speech and are about to move on to another. This is a non-verbal link that can work very well so long as it’s not overdone.

By physically moving, your body language can tell the audience that you are moving on to something new. If you turn to the bride, they will know you are going to talk to her, or about her.

Finally, a quotation, anecdote or joke can serve as an excellent link. Here a man-on-the-bus gag links a personal compliment about good manners with a more general observation that everyone has played their part in making this a day to remember:

Melanie always shows good old-fashioned courtesy to her fellow human beings. A rare attribute today, I’m sure you’ll agree. When she was on the bus last week she stood up to give an elderly gentleman her seat. He was so surprised he fainted. When he came round he said ‘Thank you’ and Melanie fainted. Well I’m delighted to say there has been absolutely no shortage of courtesy here today. Things could not have gone better ...

You will find plenty of quotations, anecdotes and jokes that you can use in the following two chapters. What a link!