A humorous speech is like a usual speech, just slightly ( or quite!) different. In humorous
speeches, the main purpose of the speech should be to ensure that the audience has fun and
enjoys the speech, but otherwise, it would be just like a regular speech. There has to be a proper
structure and it is always advisable to leave the audience behind with a little take-home message.
When you are delivering a speech to an audience, and a humorous one at that, a lot of things
have to be done right to create any sort of lasting impact through your words. Some tips would
be helpful in this regard so, here are a few steps that you can follow when writing humorous
speeches.
The most important step is the first: selecting a theme for your speech. It’s like doing a SWOT
analysis. You select a few different themes that you like, or that you’re comfortable with, which
are definitely not offensive, and do a small analysis to identify what theme will be the best to
base your speech on. It’s very important to select a theme that you’re not only comfortable with
but that you can also relate your stories to. For example, you could select love, or your romantic
life. This theme has to be something you and others would be comfortable with, and something
you can build upon.
So once you’ve selected your theme that you’re going to be talking about, the next thing is to
brainstorm stories and ideas. A theme is so large, there can be a lot of sub themes in it, so if its
love for instance, you can even write the speech about your own experience in love, how you
failed or succeeded at it, and once you select the sub theme you can gather some interesting
stories that happened to you about this theme. So there, you brainstorm some thoughts and
stories and keep them in hand.
Next, think about the message that you want to give to the audience. Now the take home
message is not the most important thing like in a normal speech, but it’s important that you
identify what your take home message is so that you can write your humorous speech. So maybe
the take home message that you want to give relevant to our example here is that you can find
love in the most unexpected places! And once you figure out what this take home message you
want to give through your humorous speech is, then you can start writing the speech.
Next, when you write the speech, always make sure that you try to grab the attention of the
audience. So the stories that you have relating to your love life, make sure you express them in a
way that the audience will be amazed, and will be interested in your speech from the start till the
end. This is because in a humorous speech if you don’t retain the interest of the audience
throughout the speech, if the audience loses interest at one point, or doesn’t understand the humor
in your story, it’s going to partially be a failure. Writing and presenting a humorous speech is
harder than a normal speech because at the end of the day, normal speeches don’t have to
necessarily make the audience laugh, you just have to make sure you deliver a good message,
and that the speech you deliver is a proper and nice speech. But in humorous speeches, if the
audience doesn’t laugh or seem to enjoy the speech, then the whole point of the speech is going
to waste.
So then, you have the theme, the sub theme, the stories you want to include in the speech relating
to the sub theme, and you have the small take home message in hand. Now what you have to do
is to arrange these stories in a humorous way so that in the end it connects to the message
you want to give. So in using humor to arrange these stories, some things are very important.
One of the most important things to keep in mind is to not use offensive humor. There are some
things you don’t joke about. For instance, a person’s religion, gender identity, political beliefs, etc
since those things can be very sensitive and can be interpreted in very different ways, and
therefore, you should not use it.
Let’s draw from personal experience. I remember a speech competition I went to once, where I
mentioned that I attended a wedding that had a lot of shootings (photoshoots). Obvious next joke
right? Well I said that it reminded me of an American highschool, of course implying that it
actually reminded me of the school shootings that happened in America, which is somewhat like
dry humor, but at the same time i did not realize that it can be a little sensitive and even a bit dark
to joke about that. At the end of the speech (I did not win the competition), I got some
comments, and one such comment I got was that my humor might be a bit too offensive for some
people. Different people take humor in different ways, so we should always keep it in mind, to
not offend anyone. That is why the first thing you must do when preparing your speech with the
help of your stories, is to check for offensive humor, and make sure you don’t offend people,
companies, anyone’s beliefs or anything of the like. There are so many other ways in which you
can use humor without offending anyone.
Once you write the speech, you will have used a lot of jokes and its important to try to be as
authentic as possible because sometimes people quote stand up comedians, movies, and other
comedians and their jokes, and what they don’t know is that though the judges might not know
the joke, and might not be familiar with it, the audience might be, so if you’re reusing a joke, and
not being original with your jokes, one thing is you’re plagiarizing, and the second thing is it’s
going to affect the authenticity of your speech, and people aren’t going to remember you as an
authentic speaker, but rather someone who steals other people’s jokes, which in some countries is
even a crime as well. So avoid copying jokes, but you can always get inspired by other
comedians or other famous public speakers who do humorous speeches.
Once you incorporate all that, you can write the speech. The problem that you might have is, “I
don’t, have interesting things happening in my life, that I can put into stories, I don’t have funny
stories happening in my life, I have no experiences, my life is boring”, and in that case, know
that your humorous speech doesn’t necessarily have to be about your life. You can talk about
what happened to other people. It doesn’t have to be in first person all the time. Yes, it will
always be better if you can apply your personal plight and stories to your speeches because they
are authentic to you, and are fresh, and can be an original experience for the listeners as well, but
if you don’t have personal experiences, it is possible to write about your friends, or you can even
write about general themes. For instance you can write about the Met Gala which you didn’t
attend, in the third person point of view, in a humorous way. That is definitely possible and is
okay.
And now once you’re done writing the speech, comes the crucial part, which is practicing how
to give this speech. You cannot deliver humorous speeches the way you deliver a normal speech
or a normal international contest speech. Your comedic timing has to be close to perfect (nothing
is perfect!). Your vocal variations, if you can imitate voices, and people, if you can change roles, and
bring out the most dramatic aspect of the speech when performing, you’ll obviously grab the
attention of the audience and judges when speaking and it will give you a high chance of
winning the contest. Writing a humorous speech and performing a humorous speech are equally
important, which are the two things that you have to work on. Last but definitely not least, just
be yourself. Don’t try to bring out a different personality or try to imitate someone else, but be
yourself, because humor comes from within, so it’s always better to be truly you in front of the
stage, because people will love you for you and for your humor. Everyone has a unique sense of
humor, so bear in mind that you have to be you, when giving your humorous speech, so in that
way, you can create a brand for yourself
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