a different sort of speech

I gave a rather different speech at Toastmasters last week.

When you complete the ten speeches in the Competent Communication Toastmasters manual and get your Competent Communicator (CC) award, a whole new world opens up. There are fifteen advanced manuals from which you can choose. You get two free with your CC award. I chose The Entertaining Speaker and Speaking to Inform. The first project in The Entertaining Speaker is at the end of the Competent Communication manual so I gave that speech. I was ready to continue down that path, but my manuals didn’t arrive. To fill in I ordered three more manuals, Storytelling, Technical Presentations, and Humorously Speaking.

I started on the first project in Storytelling. My entertain and inform manuals finally showed up, but I was far enough along with the storytelling project that I kept going. That first project involves telling a folk tale. There was a time when this would involve a trip to the library if you did not have a volume of folk tales on your shelf at home. But thanks to the Internet and Google I could do all the necessary research sitting at my computer in my study at home.

The first folk tale I selected was simply too long and complicated. My time frame was seven to nine minutes, and to fit into that I realized I would have to do great violence to the plot. So I dropped my first attempt and selected a Russian folk tale entitled The Sea King’s Daughter. I had to do a lot of cutting there as well, but I was able to maintain the primary thread of the story.

It was fun working on the project, and I got to immerse myself in that world for a while. I was, however, a bit tired of it by the day of the speech. Still, I enjoyed telling the tale, and the members were impressed, I believe. At least they recognized it as something different.

The next speech involves telling a personal story. Much more conventional by Toastmaster standards. The folk tale was, though, a very enjoyable diversion.