Starting the 2007 Season

The 2007 Contest season was about to start and I had been waiting for it for eleven months.  I had the speech I wanted to do ready and was feeling really good about it.

 

 Soon after my first competitions, I realized an important thing about a contest speech.  A good story can get you far, but it wont take you all the way.  The story had to be a very important story, to me, with an element of emotion.  An easier way to put it may be, the story had to ‘be ME’.  The emotion is what makes your audience want more and the fact that you are telling it from a point of view of personal experience adds credibility and authenticity.

 

I started with a ten minute speech I gave for my tenth speech in the Competent communicator manual, “Inspire Your Audience.”  It was another speech that went over well and I was excited to be working with it, again.   I took that speech added some new information and then squeezed it down to a seven minutes speech.  I had taken the year to do this and I had the speech ready to go in November.  I spent the next three and a half months studying the speech and “making it mine.”

 

Contest day came with disappointing news.  I would be the only person competing …  Ok ok, there was no contest.  It was cool to go on to the next level, but I was hoping to be able to compete for that position, so I could gauge how good or bad my speech really was.

 

I gave my speech as a practice for the area contest and received a group evaluation from the entire club.  Everyone in the club gave me very high marks.  I felt confident after the meeting and was looking forward to the Area 13 contest, which was in about a months.  I took the suggestions from the group evaluation and  went back to practicing.

 

I felt confident about my speech all the way up to the moment I found out who I was competing against.  Then I began to plan for the next year even before the competition started.  This was the beginning of one of my most important lessons in competitive speaking.