4: Practice, Practice, Practice

With your story in hand and probably some slides created or other visual aids that you selected it is time for the final step in your preparations, practicing. Don’t underestimate the power of this step as it really can help you in bringing your story together and limit the nerves you will experience once you are on stage! Know your story to the bone and you will recover from any memory loss within seconds!

Don't feel like reading? Check out the video at the bottom of this article!

Staged practice

I always practice my presentation in stages, starting with reading the full story out loud. I do this to memorize the order of the topics and the first set of details that come with each of the topics. In general, I do this while sitting behind my computer or using my phone as a guide and I quickly try to put the notes away to see if I can do it from memory already. In case I have slides, I will use these as my guide with the presenter notes on my screen as well (In PowerPoint, use the “Presenter View”).

Once I notice that I am starting to get the hang of it, I go into more details where I will practice each topic separately in full detail and push myself to know 80% of my story by heart. I repeat this for each of my topics. This is also the moment where I will start to take away my notes.

I mention that I go for 80% of my story as I know from experience that you will never reach a full 100% once you are on stage. Most of the time I tend to say things that were not in my notes and forget about things that were. By aiming for 80%, I leave myself some flexibility to improvise on stage as well.

As soon as I reach this stage for any of the topics, I will start with what I call the “offline practicing”, which means that I will pretty much start telling my story to myself. I do this per topic and at the strangest locations and time. My commute is about an hour, so in the car is a nice place where I have peace and can talk out loud. My daughters often hear me practice in the shower as well or I simply go for a walk in the forest with the dog, where people will look weird at me. I honestly think these little “offline” sessions are the ones that help me the most. It is during these sessions where I will also start to focus on how I tell my story, for which I wrote a section in this chapter as well called “Voice and Body”.

Last but not least, I will start to practice without any notes while standing up straight as if I am on stage already. If I have slides to show, I will beam these on the television and connect a presentation clicker to my laptop to help me click through my slides. My wife will often act as my audience, which she loves doing as this gives her a chance to give me some raw feedback, which I can use again to improve. Here to, the voice and body get a lot of focus and is probably the thing that gets trained the most!

Voice and Body

Your story can be insanely good and memorized to the bone, maybe even accompanied by the best visual aids in the world, but it is nothing if you do not bring it the right way. This is where your voice and body come into play. I have been in doubt on where to place this subject in the book as it is insanely important but given this is the moment I start paying attention to this part of storytelling, I think this is the best place to start talking about it as well.

In this book I will not go into full detail, but we will touch upon some of the basics as these can make or break your story.

Voices…

Let’s start with using your voice. Most people, when nervous, tend to talk faster than normal and they start to sound like a robot. The majority of audiences will simply checkout in the first 10 seconds if you talk like this, so let’s make sure we fix that before it happens. By using your voice in the proper way, you can make yourself relive that moment you are talking about. You can make it sound sad or happy, add a bit of excitement or madness, anything that fits the stuff you are talking about. The funny thing is that this also transmits to your audience, and they start feeling the same thing, making them feel the story as you tell it to them. There are many things you can control with your voice, but for this book I will stick to the top 3, which are Pitch, Pace and Volume.

Starting with pitch, which is the tone of your voice, you want to make sure you do not get the robot voice. Play with your pitch a bit to make sure you bring some feeling into your story. The majority of your story, you will stay within a limited range of pitch, but try to pick some moments in your story where you want to make it extra happy and increase the tone of your voice. Maybe there are some moments in your story where you want to make it more dramatic or scary and lower the tone of your voice. At these moments you want to go outside of your default limits. Exaggerate a bit to make it extra powerful.

The pace, or speed of your voice, is another aspect you can control and can have major impact on your story and your audience. The first thing to do is quiet obvious, slow down. Being nervous makes you talk faster and lose your audience. Next to talking in a pleasant pace, you can also play with it to add more depth to your story. For example, when you want something extra clear, slow down a bit. It gives a sense of drama and importance when you slow down for certain parts of your sentences. It makes your audience remember those parts of your story more easily, but also feel what you are trying to convey. The same counts the other way around, speed up a bit when you are talking about something take makes you excited. This excitement will transmit to your audience, making them more captivated and engaged.

Closely connected to your pace, are your pauses. Do not keep on going from one subject to the next, take some pauses to breath and think about the next part. These pauses are good for you and your audience as they need time to process what was just said. Another benefit of timing your pauses is that they will also eliminate your filler words (uhhs, ahhs, so, like, etc…), and as we will soon practice, pauses enhance the drama effect as well.

Last in this list is your volume and I expect that you can already guess where this is going. Exactly, you can play with this one as well. First of all, think about your standard volume, especially when you are not wearing a microphone. Your voice should be loud enough so the people in the back of the audience can hear you as well. Next to your default volume, you can also play around with it a bit to emphasis certain words or sentences. For example, if you are talking about something precious, try lowering your volume just a bit, as if you are trying to whisper. The oppossite counts as well, when you are trying to make a statement, increase your volume just a bit to make sure it pops out!

Lets do a little practice on this.

Take the following sentence and say it out loud in a normal voice.

“Two men were walking down a path in the forest and as the night fell, they realised… They were all alone…”

Now we will do it again, but instead of just reading it out loud, try to lower the pitch, and speed of your voice just a little bit for the first part. Then take a small pause, lower your pitch and volume a bit more for the last bit and take some nano pauses between each word. Make it sound scary and exciting…

Decrease pitch and pace:

“Two men were walking down a path in the forest and as the night fell, they realised…”

Decrease pitch and volume a bit more, take a small pause between each word..

“ They were all alone…”

Did it work? Are you feeling the fear of what might happen next???

With this knowledge in your hand, try listening to yourself for the next few days when you speak to other people and pay close attention to your pitch, pace, and volume. If you are up to it, try playing around with it a bit as well and you will be surprised how people act different on what you say.

Bodies…

As mentioned, next to your voice, there is also your body language which can have a massive impact on your story and the reason for this is already mentioned in a previous chapter, where I mentioned that people will first scan you slide (visual) before listening to you again (auditory). Whenever someone talks, but keep their body in a standstill, it somehow distracts from the story. This does not mean that you need to start running around the stage while waving your arms, as this will have the same effect and make you look like a fool, instead try to use something that is called “functional movement”.

If you are one of the many people that are wondering what to do with your hands when you are on stage, pay special attention to the next part, as this is where that question will get answered.

The best way to explain what functional movement is, is by given the example of talking about something small, while showing something big with your arms. Doing this makes it very confusing for your audience as they hear you say one thing, but the visual cue they are receiving says something different. And this is all it is. Use your hands and arms to visualize what you are saying. Something small can be shown with your thumb and index finger nearly squeezed together, while something big means stretching your arms apart with as much space between your hands as possible. An increasing line, you make a diagonal motion with your hand from your right bottom to your left top (this makes it look increasing for your audience). If you are talking about “hearing” something, put your hand at your ear as if you are listening and more of these kinds of motions. Using your hands and arms like this, will emphasize what you are saying, helping your audience to better understand, and feel part of your story.

When it comes to your feet, you can pretty much do the same. A bad example in this one would be to welcome everyone in the audience, while taking a step back. The words you use say they are welcome to step in your circle, while you are stepping out of it… Not really a welcoming feeling. Instead, try taking a step forward when welcoming people and open your arms as if you are going to hug them! Make them feel like you mean it. Another thing not to do is walk around the stage from left to right, this shows you are nervous, and the audience will feel it as well. Instead, try to stand firm with your feet about a shoulder’s width apart. Turn your body a little bit to the left and look at the audience on the left side of the stage and do the same on the right side. Take a step forward when you are trying to make a point and slowly step back to your default position again. When you are talking about something small, you might consider bending through your knees and lean a bit forward. Especially if you are going to whisper with it. Sometimes your story would benefit from putting one leg forward or one leg back. The trick is to align your movements with your story and see what works best.

Another good practice, also in your daily live, is to turn your body towards the person that you are speaking to. On stage this can be done by actually walking towards someone when they ask a question or when you speak to someone in your audience directly. Off-course, you stay on the stage, but stand on the edge as close as possible to the person. This will connect you to them and make it more personal.

Personally, I can’t stand still. My legs need to move, so I will walk around a little and I try to combine this with looking at different parts of the audience. Unfortunately for me, this still makes me look like a nervous wreck, which is my downfall pretty much every time I stand on stage. I am in peace with this now, but I did make it my personal improvement project.

Where to go next

Now that you have practiced, the day is coming close... Read about this one in the next article called "Doomsday!"

Check out the video about this article!