Having been the member of the London Cardinals Toastmasters‘ club for a couple of months now I’ve had the opportunity to watch several accomplished public speakers including a UK and Ireland champion. I’ve done a couple of table topics - short impromptu speeches - however the dreaded “icebreaker” is approaching (booked for December 15th). The icebreaker gives toastmasters the opportunity to introduce themselves to the club in a five minute pre-prepared speech which is timed, evaluated and will likely be delivered in front of an audience of 30+ people.
The standard of icebreakers I have seen so far has been pretty spectacular. I think the general skill level within the club encourages members to go the extra mile. And for that reason I have been wracking my brain for ideas and searching for good resources to help me out. The kind of speeches I have most enjoyed (and most want to copy) are ones that tell stories that draw the audience in and have them hanging on every word. Thankfully, as the internet has advice about everything in the world ever, there are some good resources to hear stories and get advice about how to tell them:
This American Life - has become an addiction of mine recently. Each hour long podcast contains a selection of esoteric stories, loosely related to a theme.
Ira Glass discussing story telling on YouTube - Ira Glass, the presenter of This American Life, discusses what makes a good story.
The Moth - A performance venue in New York which has a podcast of recorded short stories delivered on-stage, live, without notes.
I’ve been busy writing an speech about the flat I lived in during my second year of university and the people who lived next door (specifically “Psycho Guy”). Some funny stuff happened that year. My main approach so far has been to unload all my ideas into Gmail and add to them whenever I have a flash of inspiration - but by far the biggest problem I’m having is deciding what details to leave out to give the story better structure and pace. I’ll post it up here when I’m done - and it will be filmed so if you’re lucky there may be some YouTube action too.