Plans Are Useless, but Planning Your Speech Is Indispensable

“In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” – General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The job of a speaker is much like that of a tour guide. You always need to know where you’re going and get people to follow you.

But how do you make your way to the destination and, more importantly, how do you keep people on track?

While tour guides have maps, speakers have their own tool they can use to plan their speech ahead: the outline.

If outlines are the maps of speeches, you might think everyone uses them to prepare their presentations. Well, they sure should, but they don’t.

Unfortunately, most of the people skip this essential part when crafting their presentations either due to lack of time or simply because they overlook the importance of structure.

Nonetheless, I think we can all agree that a good speech has to make sense, both to the speaker and the audience, and lead to a point.

But how exactly do you write a speech outline and how does this help your talk make more sense and reach its goal?

Photo by Charles Deluvio / Unsplash

First, let’s see how a speech outline is made.

1. Choose the right type of structure.

To begin with, before you start writing, you need to decide on the type of speech you will deliver and choose the right type of structure, be that informative, persuasive, ceremonial etc.

You can do this by thinking about the reason you are giving the presentation, then move on to set the goal you wish to achieve through your talk.

For instance, if the main purpose of your speech is to share your knowledge or convey information on a certain topic, then you should look at an informative speech structure.

However, if your goal is to convince people to take a certain action following your speech, then you need to structure your speech in a persuasive manner.

2. Draft your main points.

The next step towards a successfully structured speech is the outline of your main points. This is where you start drafting the main idea of your speech and its supporting arguments, following the structure you’ve chosen in the previous step.

You begin with the topic, continue with the main arguments or pieces of information you want to share and then come up with examples, statistics or other details to support them.

You may want to limit the number of points you want to address and break each main point into smaller subsections to make your ideas easier to grasp.

3. Arrange your ideas in a logical order.

The final step is the one that actually brings the “structure” part to your outline.

This is where you take all the ideas you’ve written and arrange them in a logical order.

As we’ve said before, for a speech to be good, it has to make sense.

Make your ideas flow naturally by arranging them in an order that supports and enhances the effect you want to have on your audience.

If you want them to understand a certain concept, give them the pieces of information gradually, moving from general to specific aspects.

Also, if you want people to be able to follow you throughout your presentation, you might want to use transition words that show how each piece of information connects with one another.

Let’s now move on to discuss how structure helps the speaker.

Outlining helps you get your ideas in order and figure out the core message you want to send through your presentation.

It helps you both in the process of writing, as well as with the delivery of your speech.

First, by putting your ideas on paper, you are able to decide what you need to say and how you should say it.

At this point, you decide what to keep and what to toss, what helps you make your point and what doesn’t.

Outlining acts like a filtering process, helping you boil down your thoughts to just one important idea around which you can then build your argument.

Once you have set the objective of your speech and its main pillars, all you need to do is build the bridges between these pillars.

Second, by arranging your arguments in a naturally flowing order, you are also clearing the path towards a flawless delivery.

As long as you have a clear, logical structure in your mind, you won’t have to worry about forgetting your speech anymore. All you need to remember is your outline.

While these arguments may not be enough to make you consider outlining a vital part of your speech, you should note that compromising structure for whatever reason can be the recipe for the disaster of your speech: chaotic writing results in a chaotic delivery, which, in turn, will create nothing but chaos in your listeners’ minds.

Now that we’ve seen what structure does for the speaker, let’s see what it can do for the audience.

For the information to be remembered, it needs to be understood. And for it to be understood, it needs to be structured.

Photo by Thiébaud Faix / Unsplash

It turns out that people remember structured information up to 40% more accurately than information that is served to them in a random manner.

Structure helps your audience grasp more complex ideas by gradually feeding them chunks of information in a logical order and showing them the relation between these pieces.

You don’t have to challenge your audience to decipher the message of your speech, nor expect them to make their own way through the maze of your ideas to figure out your point.

Your audience is more likely to listen to you if you make your message clear to them and show them how each point of your speech supports and eventually leads to this message.

Simply put, it’s easier for people to get to where you want them to if you tell them where they’re headed and give them a map.

So, be a nice guide and make your audience’s journey a pleasant one.