A beautifully crafted talk is a wonder to listen to. It takes one on a roller-coaster ride that finishes all to quickly and leaves one wanting for more. They capture the audience’s attention.

A good device to use at the beginning of a talk is the rhetorical question. These are not meant to be answered by the audience, because the speaker will go on to convince the audience to a particular point of view or call to action.

There is beauty in skillfully used linguistic devices, like onomatopoeia, alliteration and metaphors to mention but a few.

As a speaker you are painting a picture with your words.

When using these devices remember two things:

1. Who your audience is.
2. What the purpose of your talk is.

My personal favourite are metaphors – they are useful when trying to explain a complex concept, principle or idea. The correctly used metaphor will short-cut the process of understanding.  Someone once told me that you do not understand something until you can turn it into a metaphor.

A last word on this lesson – do not over do it as too many can overwhelm your audience. The key is minimalism – use them to stress or highlight important points.

…and we have reached P, being for Preparation.

This post is part of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Twitter hashtag is #AtoZChallenge and Twitter id is @AprilA2Z