On 13 March, I set off for an evening talk for Sutton Writers' Circle in Surrey, my fourth speaking engagement in five days.
I arrived in good time for their meeting's 8pm start at the town's Civic Offices (I would have arrived even earlier if it hadn't been for a system of barriers in Cheam Road which seems to have been designed for the purpose of preventing pedestrians from getting anywhere near the place!)
There were nearly 25 at the Writers' Circle and their meeting began with news of members' successes. Two ladies gave very good readings of their (excellent) original poetry and I was asked to read out a topical gag which a gentleman had sold to a magazine for a sum probably comparable to TV money!
Then it was my turn to speak. This was my first booking for this group so it was always going to be a tall order to fit 'how-to' information on a range of topics plus entertaining, relevant anecdotes into their usual 45-50 minutes. I know from experience that members of writers' groups and classes have interests covering a wide range of humorous genres. When I taught adult learning courses in comedy writing, these were 10 - 12 weeks long. Even allowing for the fact that much of this time was utilised hearing students read their own work and then giving feedback, there was still a huge amount of information to cover. So a condensed version for a single talk has to cover the basics of a number of forms of humorous writing and give examples of each.
For this talk, I had also been asked to put some emphasis on writing sketches as this was of particular interest to a number of members.Fortunately, their Secretary Ros Black agreed that I could speak for a little longer than 50 minutes. In the talk, I covered: my own career and how it started through competitions leading to my writing for BBC radio comedy programmes for 12 years, my scripting an hour-long Radio 2 music documentary, branching out into writing for fringe theatre, cabaret acts, speeches and commercial radio presenters, becoming a stand-up comic, public speaker, evening class lecturer, self-publishing a booklet of anecdotes, writing a magazine column and, of course, blogging!
I then moved on to the basics of Found Humour; Anecdotes (with an example of the facts of a story and then the humorous version I actually use at speaking engagements): Observational Humour (including a personal routine about Diaries from my JOCK BOOKS); Devising Original Gags (including a topical one-liner from that day); Routines; Sketchwriting (including a flipchart exercise where the audience 'recreated' a radio sketch of mine and then listened to the actual version plus a recording of a longer sketch); Developing Character for longer items; Articles (I read out my most recent Radio Magazine column): Self-Publishing (I read an anecdote from my booklet Nick R's in a Twist!); Blogging; Creating Ideas; Markets.
I included a number of (relevant) anecdotes, including of course, the new one about the dangers of wordplay plus another story about coping with rejection. It's quite a physical piece for me but it's worth doing because it gets a great laugh. I discovered long ago when I was doing stand-up spots that bringing a sort of put-upon or rueful tone and facial expression during some of my material seems to bring a far greater response than I had anticipated.
Public Speaking Tip #300: If you feel confident enough (and the space where you are speaking allows for it) a good humorous anecdote can be much more effective if you 'act it out' by adding facial expressions, physical actions, etc. This does not mean that you have to turn your entire speech into a slapstick/ stand-up comedy act but it can make the odd story really shine - and thus become more memorable for your audience.
The entire presentation lasted just over an hour plus questions but no-one seemed to be complaining, in fact one man said it was the best they'd had. Over refreshments, I chatted with members and sold booklets (a very high proportion of the audience bought them). It was a most enjoyable evening.
My thanks to Ros Black, not only for sorting out a lift back to the station, but also for this super email testimonial which arrived the following morning:
"Thank you for your most interesting & amusing talk last night. I have already had 3 emails from members saying how much they enjoyed the evening.
I'm sure you've inspired a few of us to have a go at comedy
writing in one form or another. It was co-incidental, but useful, that
one of our members had just sold his "laughterline" to Reader's Digest
for £100 as this nicely reinforced your point about exploring all the
different markets and not being too precious.
Thank you once again".
So, as you can see, my prepared material also tied in usefully with the earlier part of their meeting.
So, as you can see, my prepared material also tied in usefully with the earlier part of their meeting.
