The art of public speaking

It seems almost too timely to talk about the ability to speak publicly as a means of promoting one’s book in light of all the publishing doom-and-gloom that’s taken over the site of late. Anyway, Rosemary Goring, the Glasgow Herald’s book critic, uses the upcoming Edinburgh Book Festival as a means of overviewing the subject:

When an author walks on to a platform to speak, there’s a hush of anticipation. For most readers, publication is a sacred attainment. Though they rarely don a surplus or carry a mace, writers are seen as one step short of holy, held in greater respect now than the parish minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Pope himself.

For writers, however, publication does not confer an automatic halo of confidence. Novices and old-timers alike find public appearances scary.

Those who chair events at the book festival are often surprised by the nervousness of the biggest names in the business. Some go white, or quiver, or make a bolt for the Portaloos. A few have to be coaxed away from the clutches of a particularly clingy bottle of scotch.

Meanwhile, Terry Teachout (who’s just returned from one trip only to go off gallivanting somewhere else) was asked by a writer friend of his for tips on how to make the most of a public event or a reading, and he delivers with some very sage advice:

(1) Don’t read too much. No matter how good your book is, you don’t want to spend all your time reading from it. You also need to make direct contact with your listeners, which is harder to do when you’re reading out loud from a text written for the eye, not the ear. If you’ve been asked to perform for thirty minutes, speak for ten, read for just short of twenty, then deliver a prepared coda at the end of the excerpt from the book.

(2) Write your speech out word for word. If you’re an experienced public speaker accustomed to working from sketchy notes, fine. If you know you can wing it like a virtuoso, more power to you—but in either case, you wouldn’t be asking for tips from me. If you’re anybody else, write the speech out word for word, then practice reading it aloud until your delivery sounds natural and conversational. (See below for instructions.) Otherwise, you’ll get lost in a thicket of likes and you knows and ers and ahs—and you’ll talk too long.

And my favorite:

(8) Strive for vocal emphasis and variety. Most authors are ineffective in front of an audience because their delivery is dull. The goal is to sound like you’re talking informally, not lecturing (and that includes whatever passages you choose to read from the book itself). Each sentence should have its own point of emphasis. Find it and mark it in your manuscript. Don’t trust your memory—underline key words, or highlight them in boldface. And be sure to keep your energy level high. If you don’t sound excited, your listeners won’t feel excited.

With the sheer number of writers, many of whom are simply not naturally inclined to speak in public, going out on book tours or asked to speak at a public event, it’s so, so important to infuse the passage with some degree of life. I can’t tell you how many times I zone out during a reading because the delivery is flat or stilted. And I’ve been attracted to a writer’s work (if I’ve never read his or her books before) solely based on their ability to speak publicly. If publishers don’t have some kind of public speaking module included in their promotion and publicity budget, they damn well should.