I happens you know, every once and a while, you’ll be asked to speak in front of people. Asked to talk about a particular topic… or even worse asked to talk about whatever you want! The latter being the worse of the two no doubt.

The obvious questions comes up of what you’re going to say. And then how you’re going to say it. Most other speech writing articles help you with the structure of the writing, but often that’s the easiest part. The harder part is structuring your idea. Well have no fear, I’ll help you out… right here:

Note: for some help and examples I’ve block quoted what I did for my valedictorian speech, which you can view in full here!

Speech thinking

Decide on your message.

The message is the soul of your speech. Look deep and analyze what you want your audience to get out of your speech. This is an important step, and is commonly overlooked because you never actually get to write it out. But I encourage you to do so just to keep it in your mind when your actually writing the speech.

The message doesn’t have to be a sentence, or a piece of information. It can very well be an emotion or an idea. For a goodbye speech you could make it a bitter sweet goodbye, which would make the audience sad, but at the same time excited and happy about the future. It’s up to you, but your message should be woven into each paragraph of your speech.

For my valedictorian speech I chose a simple message of chasing your dreams, and living up to your potential.

Decide on your theme. (probably the hardest part)

The theme is similar to your message, but can be literally anything you want. A theme should tie together the entire idea in something simple and common to the audience. A common theme throughout your speech should be referred to throughout but only make complete sense at the end. It’ll help the listener understand your message.

For my valedictorian speech I chose my new puppy to be my theme. It was quite simple really. My new puppy was taking over my life, and one day while teaching him fetch and mulling over speech idea’s it all came to me. And that’s the best way to describe it… Once I knew what the theme was… I just knew. It could connect to my life and my target audience really easily and it’s something that everyone loves (no one can not like a puppy). He was so innocent and naive, and during his dreams he would run and bark, being a part of something huge. Something that could easily be related to my message of chasing your dreams and living up to your potential.

Don’t skip this part, don’t skim this part, this is the hardest part of a speech. It’s really the only thing that can hold the entire speech together, and in the end people can look back and understand more. It makes for a really polished piece of work.

Speech writing.

Some places will bog you down with crazy formatting… but what’s the point. You’re speaking it, you wont hand it in anywhere… You can write it in one large paragraph, you can write it in a million little ones, whatever is easiest to remember for you… write it that way. Keep in mind these three basic structural points.

Opening.

It’s not really an intro, because you don’t have to introduce anything, if you don’t want to. It’s really just a start to your speech. Many people will start the speech off by saying hello and thanking people for coming. Possibly congratulating someone who deserves it.

What you can introduce here is your theme. Don’t explain it, just subtly refer to it or use it as an analogy.

I could say that I recently got a puppy, and it reminds me a lot of how a teacher would see us as students.

Body.

The meat and potatoes – i guess – of your speech. Pick a few points that you want to talk about, and remember your message. You should be able to easily tie them together no matter how unrelated they are to each other with your common theme.

As a general tip, odd numbers seem to work better. You’re able to have a distinct middle and for some reasons humans feel comfortable when they have that.

Write out the points separately, and then organize them based on how strong they are, and what emotions you want to evoke at a particular time.

For my speech, I wanted it to be funny to please the jokers, happy to please the majority, and sad to close the chapter on our life. Hopefully your theme will build up a stronger presence as you continue through your body, reaching a climax in the closing paragraph

Closing.

This is where you have everyone’s full attention, and hopefully they’re eating up what your saying. If so you can do with them what you please. But the closing paragraph is generally where Sherlock would explain his genius.

It’s time for one last referral to the theme. But this time it’s not to enhance a particular point; it’s to enhance your message. Use the closing as your area to pass the message along to your audience.

For my speech I simply explained why I decided to talk about my puppy, and that was enough.

Afterwards, remember to say thanks for listening, and you’re off the hook.

Some general tips to concur the universe.

• The part of your brain that is used for noticing repetition is not the same part that is used for logical thought. How can this help you? Well since your theme can be repetitive (YES WE CAN), you can easily fend off most people who will refute any of your points by adding an extra ounce of repetition to that particular area. Did Obama know this? Maybe… i’m not sure.
• Don’t have your speech written out in full in front of you. This will encourage you to read it, try memorizing it and have cue cards just in case you get lost.
• Speaking slowly is much better than speaking too fast.
• Practise, Practise, Practise! The more “uhms” and “ahs” you can get rid of the better your speech will sound.
• Build on emotions that are already there. If you audience is happy, it’ll take extra work to make them sad, it’ll be easier just to build on the happiness.
• Read this post on public speaking!

Read my ENTIRE valedictorian speech here

I’m sitting on a train right now, I don’t mind it really. It’s nice, it’s fairly roomy, I’m comfy and I can sit here and type. I live in Canada, and because I was lucky enough for both of my parents to be born here and for them to meet and have me here, I’ll never know about most of the serious problems of the world. The more I travel and the more I learn – sometimes independent of each other, sometimes not – the more I realize just how lucky I am to be in such an amazing country. However, if you don’t complain about your vacuum you’ll never get a dyson. So let’s rant.

We live in a North American society where very few people take public transit. But recently with the imminent attack of climate change around the corner, us North Americans are deciding to be more eco-conscious. We’re seeing recycling bins popping up on almost every street corner and our giant corporations pretending to do the best they can to help too. The average Joe is helping the cause, We’re flicking out the lights, or running our dryers in the middle of the night, but we still encouraged to do more. Like take public transit.

But here is the really big problem with our public transit: It doesn’t work very well. We’re too rich as persons and too big as a society to create a functional public transit system. That is, until we want one.

I got a drive to Richmond Hill (a place just north of Toronto) and it took me 1h and 30mins. It was out of my way yes, but it was manageable. On the way back, I figured I’d take public transportation! To be honest it was more to save my father trouble than to save the environment… but either way, it was available. I lucked out too; I managed to never have to wait once for a train or anything! It seemed all the lights were green as I approached. And the same voyage that took me 1.5 hours took me 3.5 hours!

Wait, What?! That’s insane! Why would I want to waste 2 extra hours travelling when I could just drive? Depending on the gas prices, it MAY be cheaper… but not by enough to waste two hours.

So it seems: More important than getting the mass of commuters to take public transit is to get the public transit to be efficient and effective enough to take the mass majority.

In my mind there are two things that need to be in place for people to even consider taking the train to work – as opposed to the car.

1. If not less, it must be at least the same time commuting.
2. It should run you about the same price as driving there (factor in insurance and maintenance if you will).

The third thing, which we also need to work on, is a system in place that can adapt to the increased demand of the first two. These factors should out way the inconvenience of not having a car with you in the city to get you to off the grid areas.

Can Ontario do this? Yes.

Will Ontario do this? Not for a long time! As responsible and responsive as our government is it still lags behind in any sort of innovation. A private company could do it, but it may be too much for even them to handle. Without creating new tracks here’s what we can do!