 People who know me very well at all know that my mind almost always operates on food. I'm almost always thinking about food I love food and and I've been thinking a lot lately about sloppy Joe's sloppy Joe's are awesome Aren't they they're not only just the flavor in general But I love how everything is just kind of mushed together the sauce mixes with the meat and the onions and everything else And it all even when you if you try and pull the bun apart there it all just kind of comes apart together It's all really one unit of a sloppy Joe right, but also like things that are kind of separate and distinct Like like a good BLT right BLT has a nice Set of layers there you can and you pull it apart you've got the mayonnaise But you also then you have a clean layer of bacon and of tomato and of lettuce and everything's just kind of all separate and organized And that kind of appeals to my OCD a little bit I think but I love both of these kinds of sandwich So why are we talking about BLT's and sloppy Joe's? When we really ought to be talking about a speech organization. What's because of this? Slappy Joe's an amazing sandwich, but it is just that it's sloppy, right? It's condensed and combined and that's not what we want for speech organization We want our speech organization to be more like a BLT separate distinct layers separate distinct main points and ideas that stand out from one another So that's what we're going to talk about in this video or some some tips for speech organization and Starting with how do we organize these main points our main points? Let me give you some tips on organizing main points for a speech First of all you ought to have between two and five main points for a speech If you have just one that's not really distinct enough It's just you know talking about one thing But so we ought to have at least two but you don't want any more than five at most And I would say probably stay closer to three or four if you can depending on what you're talking about But if you get much more than five then they're all gonna kind of run together It's hard for an audience to Distinguish and to retain information when there's more than five main points. So We're thinking about how many main points we're gonna have in our speech It ought to be somewhere in that two to five range Each main point ought to really be its own Many thesis we're developing our main points It ought to be you know We're gonna have a central idea statement or a thesis statement if you will for this speech and overall Central idea or thesis statement, but each main point ought to really be its own little mini thesis statement in and of itself It ought to have a declarative sentence. What if our main points are should have a declarative It should be a declarative sentence should not be a question Shouldn't be exclamatory with an exclamation point or anything, but it should be a declarative sentence You're telling the audience what the main point is here. You're not asking them You're not shouting out you're declaring what it is here in this idea of a mini thesis statement All of these should support the main thesis statement or the main central idea statement in your speech So they should all work back to that main central idea, but they they should also have their own distinct idea We're creating main points We should whenever possible use parallel construction a meaning that we're using a similar wording or similar Structure of phrasing those types of things just to keep consistency and to help the audience identify main points and to retain main points Parallel construction can be really helpful for the audience in those regards We really want to be careful using the word and in a main point Because that typically indicates that you've really got two main points and you're trying to jam them into one main point So we want to keep it main points Singular and distinctive when we have the word and in there and we're trying to cram that in there And it doesn't really work as well. It just kind of gets muddled. So if you Have a main point and you have that word and in there try and determine it Is this really two separate points or or is it is it, you know, legitimately one thing and just happens I have the word and in it And then we want to think about primacy and recency The idea is a primacy and recency in communication indicate that an audience or you know receiver of a message is going to remember Best what they hear first and what they hear last so what they hear first is primacy and what they heard most recently is recency So if we have a really critical main point something we really want the audience to hang on to it should not be stuffed in the Middle of five main points. It should be first or it should be last And if we if you know we want to look at it and say is this really a main point that I need anyway If we're going to put it in the middle there, but but our most critical Information should be should be involved in our first main point or our final main point so that we can Give the audience a better chance of remembering that based on the principles of primacy and recency Another thing to keep in mind when we're talking about speech organizations is the importance of transitions Right. We're working the audience through these two to five main points However, many we have here, but we to help them identify these main points and help them know what's coming We want to work with transitions or connectives that move us between those two points, right? You know again thinking about food, which won't surprise anybody When I think about you know food especially plates of food my friends and family give me a hard time because you know I see people with this all the time right they just throw it all on their plate And it's all piled up there and that's colorful and it looks looks nice for whatever But I can't do that if we're up to me we would all have these little dividers on our plates, right? I like my food to be separate I like my you know one thing that I would get rid of these vegetables first of all But I like my meat to taste like my meat and I like my potatoes to taste like my potatoes And I like my mac and cheese to take like my mac and cheese. I don't want my mac and cheese to taste like meat I want my meat to taste like meat and my mac and cheese to taste like mac and cheese I want that separation. I want that distinction. That's what we want again in our in our speeches We want these separate distinct main points that we've created these two to five main points that are really Identifiable and distinct we're going to help the audience by using transitions to identify when we're moving from one to the next and And to help distinguish those things from one another So there are a variety of different types of transitions that we can use Or connectives that we can use to move from one paint one main point to the other and provide that structure to our to our To our speech One is called signposts and signposts are very simple It's usually just one word or a couple words that indicate to an audience. Okay, we're moving on here They literally just like when you're driving down the road They're called signposts because that's really what they do when you're driving on the road You see that signpost there and it says this many miles to this place or how many miles an hour is the speed limit? Or there's a curve coming up, right? That's what we're letting the audience know by saying things like first or Second or next or as I conclude those are signposts. We're sticking those signposts in the in the ground during our speech saying, okay Here's a main point first. Here's my first main point first and then when we're done with that We're gonna you know transition by saying Secondly, I'd like to tell you about this and that's a signpost or as I conclude Let's the audience know that you're bringing things in for for a conclusion that you're closing things out a little bit So those signposts just you know give that audience an indication of where we're at that something significant is coming and And and help them follow along and identify those different points So signposts can be a really simple and really effective form of transition Another is what we call review preview sometimes it we have different words for these things sometimes called review preview Sometimes people call this a transition and call the overall thing connectives or whatever you want to call it a review preview is Basically, just what it sounds like You're gonna review the point you just talked about and preview the point that's coming up You kind of match those together into one sentence a lot of time now that I've discussed this let me talk about this now that we've discussed signposts Let's talk about the review preview form of transition That's a review preview. You're just saying what you just talked about and what you're gonna talk about next So not only does it reinforce the main point that you just discussed but it gives an indication of a we're going on to an Different main point and be here's what that is and the more you can say those main points the better because the audience may not remember Every detail of your speech, but hopefully they'll be able to remember the main points So you want to state those main points, you know three four five times at least during your speech at different times and the transition Especially review preview gives you an opportunity to do that So review preview again just talks about it just states what you just talked about and state what main points coming up next And then you move into that next main point Rhetorical questions can also be a type of transition Rhetorical question is one that doesn't really require a verbal response from the audience It just you know is intended to help them think or it's just one they the speakers using to identify Again an indication of a transition or things like that so you can ask You know a rhetorical question as a form of a transition The last two types of transition that I'd like to discuss just briefly Are internal preview and internal summary you won't use these a lot probably for fairly basic speeches But if you're giving a speech where one or more of the main points is particularly complex or complicated and involves Several steps or several different items that the audience may need to keep track of an internal preview and internal summary can be helpful And saying okay, here's what we're going to be talking about here's the main point that we're talking about and it involves A, B, and C and you identify those things so the audience can help again help follow along more easily Or at the end of that main point you may say, you know now that we've talked about this Let me remind you that we just you know as part of this main point talked about a B and C as kind of a review for a more complicated main point again Not something you're going to probably do a lot in a fairly straightforward or basic speech But but they're there and keep them in mind as tools if necessary If you have questions about How to organize your main points or anything about speech organization? Please feel free to contact me via email I'd love to hear from you and and chat about this with you via email Otherwise, I hope that you will take these basics and keep them in mind as part of this foundation of building a solid speech That we ought to have clear and distinct main points layered like a BLT right not all mushed together Like a sloppy joe so that the audience can clearly identify What our main points are in this speech and where we're headed with all of this