It seems whenever I try to look for a book like this, I always get the how-to-give-speech books or the go-from-stuttering-to-normal type speech books. I, on the other hand, am trying to look for a book to go even further in my speaking ability. Right now, I’d consider myself a 7 out of 10 in terms of articulation and speaking ability. However, I want to go way above that. How I explained it to my friend was: “I want every sentence to sound like it took 20 minutes to think of.”
If you’ve seen House of Cards on Netflix, I basically want to talk like Frank (Kevin Spacey’s character).
So, if you could offer any book suggestions or just general advice from your own experience, that’d be amazing.
Public speaking is one of the most feared things for people. I’m not a natural speaker and have to think about what I’m going to say. I was horrible at it. Therefore I came up with a solution: I became a teacher. I was an aircraft maintenance instructor in the US Air Force for about 12 years and then taught computers at a local college for 16 years part-time. When I attended the USAF Technical Training Instructor course, my instructor thought that I wasn’t going to pass it. I did. Barely. It took many years, but I’m now a good instructor and an OK public speaker. My confidence level is much higher which I think helps the most.
Toastmasters! If you have a Toastmasters organization, or something similar, that may be your best bet.
Sadly there are things that just can’t be learnt by reading a book. You have to DO them or at least apply what you’ve read in a book to master it.
When I first saw your thread title, I thought, “just reading more classic lit will make you more articulate, especially Melville, Maugham, Trollope, etc.”
But now I see that you probably have the vocabulary and the deep thoughts, you just don’t have enough speaking experience to express them.
Along with JerrySTL, I’d recommend joining a philosophy/history book club, a discussion table, or even put together routine “debate” dinners with your friends, where you all sit around a table and discuss a controversial topic. Put yourself in situations where you can expound freely with other smart people, and your articulation will skyrocket. It doesn’t have to be public speaking, but you do need to get out there and speak.
Sometimes I think I get into a rut at home, with my husband and my stepson, and then I go out somewhere and talk about new topics with new people, and I surprise myself.
Not so much speaking publicly, as in giving a speech, more just speaking in general. SweetiePotato hit the nail on the head. I have a lot of thoughts and a pretty wide vocabulary, but that only comes up when I’m writing essays. Sadly, when I’m talking in general, I’m not attempting to write really good essays with my words.
I DID surprise myself the other night when I was talking to my parents about gun control. Sadly, though, these moments don’t come up often enough. I just wish I could talk like tat all the time.
Again, if someone knows of anything that’d expedite this apart from just talking more.
I found parts of Speak like Churchill, Stand like Lincoln helpful, but mostly I’ve improved through practice and doing. I have to, and I had to get better, so I practiced a lot.
According to one of the many coaches that I saw while at my private school, word choice differs between text and speech. This is because our comfort zone changes. A word that you find easy to type, might be hard for you to say, and a word that might be easy to say, might be hard to type.
He said that if wanted to sound natural and confident when giving a speech, you shouldn’t just write a speech. You should say your thoughts and then write those down, because it’ll be closer to your natural vocal word choice.
I know you don’t want help with writing speeches, but hopefully that’s given you a little bit of insight into why you speak the way you do.
