Where to Learn How To Give The well constructed speech

Would be writers travel to England to the Writers' Summer School at Swanwick and the Writers' Holiday in Wales and visit our Toastmasters Speakers' clubs. On LinkedIn I read a debate about how useless, even  insulting it is to members of the audience eager to learn if a speaker offers no useful advice and seems unprepared. The construction of a good speech and a good short story or novel or even a poem are all similar. Hero/Heroine/victim has an aim or problem, is thwarted, through determination beats the villain/opposition/self-doubt/disaster and succeeds.
The short story has one problem; the novel can have up to 50 obstacles. You can have clear helpers and foes such as rival companies, but also the hero/heroine can have friends or colleagues or family who become rivals or enemies pretending to be friends and baddies who are won over by the kindness and help of the hero/heroine (Read Treasure Island.) The same happens in real life in business.
At Toastmasters I've heard speeches prepared in the interval which were well constructed - and topics - often using material the speaker has used and prepared earlier for another subject. (This is how as an English tutor I've got failed mock O level pupils to reach A star. They prepared three perfect corrected well constructed essays. In the exam they used the same essay topic or the same structure such as past, present, future.)
In Toastmasters we tend to give ten different unrelated speeches practising various techniques. If you plan to be a professional speaker it's better and easier to pick a topic or subject and keep honing that. Martin Luther King had given his I have a dream speech many times. (In fact he abandoned his new speech and went back to the old one.)
I met an actress who was a professional speaker and she had only four speeches which she gave again and again so that like a play she had every word and pause planned and memorised. That's actors for you. But ENFP (extravert procrastinators like me - teachers and journalists - always interested in the news and trying something new) are more likely to try out a new subject every time they stand up.
Success in speeches can come from preparing the perfect speech and adapting it to a similar subject. The person who is winging it and not succeeding needs to join toastmasters and get evaluations, and a mentor. It's the same as preparing for a job interview and facing hecklers doing stand-up. But what stops the preparation is probably what drives people to Toastmasters in the first place - procrastination due to fear of facing the audience. Some of those top speakers have made millions on line with businesses run to collect money without ever meeting a person. That's why they have failed face to face. But they could succeed with a checklist - and the organiser should ask for a pre-speech run through of topics to be covered or give the speaker a list. We used to have the same at writers' conferences. Speakers promoted themselves reading out their books or literary agents told us they did not want anybody to contact them whilst the audience wanted tips. If the organisers had said, your audience is writers who have paid to learn how to write, what are your top three tips - please put them in your speech because if not as chair that will be my first question. That helps the speaker focus on what the audience wants.
I've been a member of two clubs in the UK and one in Singapore. At the time of writing this I'm President of Harrovian Speakers and if you are ever in London please look us up and email one of us and come along to a meeting, dinner or party. You'll meet friendly people and learn a lot about speaking and personalities.
www.harrovians.org.uk
Also check out my book Quick Quotations For Successful Speeches on lulu.com
I'll sign a copy for you if you buy it from me or buy it on line and bring it to a meeting.
When I'm in Singapore I go to a Toastmasters speakers' meeting every night when I'm not out to dinner.
You can also see me in action on YouTube How to give a good speech.
I have some books on Amazon new and used. Any positive feedback or good or helpful reviews would be appreciated.

LinkedIn Toastmasters Chat On Low Cost Videos For Websites

Angela Lansbury (angelalansbury@hotmail.com) • Carol mentioned wanting to re-do a video done professionally. Can two Toastmasters members in each district or area or club get together? Both could rehearse videoing the other and get experience in the production and what they want to achieve as subject of a video. A mutual self-help pair works well if one of them has the equipment. For free, a tiny fee, or small gift, or free lunch at home, the one with the equipment can video the other person as a practice. I'm president of our club, Harrovians, which bought a video recorder (which has disappeared with a member who is moving - I have to retrieve it). Our techie person researched it and bought second hand. I'm sure with more finance anybody in business even on a budget can buy even better. I previously had videos on YouTube taken by toastmaster William Brougham who visited my club as a GE. You can see several and how the first one is unrehearsed but others improve dramatically over time. He was already working in radio and later went on to do a university course in Australia. A toastmasters manual has tips on TV such as what to wear. When I did a rehearsal at my club I was advised when holding my books to treat them reverently and hold them steady for long enough for readers to see and not to wave them around. I'm now ready to be more professional on a website of my own promoting my club, and my books on speaking, and Quick Quotations (on Lulu - needs marketing) if anybody in London can help me with a website and video. 

TIPPING worldwide - To Ensure Promptitude?

To tip or not to tip - that is the question. Australasia has no tipping, but to get a hotel room in India you might have to tip the receptionist. In America staff want to increase the amount of tips to 25%. Customers, especially the British are objecting to the rise - and indeed to tipping altogether.
In China, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand there's no tipping. In Singapore and China staff back away if you offer a tip. They would lose their jobs if they accepted a bribe to treat one customer better than another. Other diners would be infuriated. To insure promptitude? Taxi customers are annoyed by Americans tipping. The taxi drivers ignore locals and go to the foreigners. The locals consider that queue jumping. To stop bribery of government officials, the government banned all tipping. Stop the habit. Make sure everybody is paid a basic wage to cut down on crime and beggars.
A good maitre d ensures you are greeted when you arrive and given the menu immediately. (See my YouTube video on restaurant service.)
When the manager pays the staff, if service is poor you complain to the management who train the staff.
     In the UK when service charges started consumers were promised tips would go or go to staff. But managements pocket tips.
     Staff are miserable if you've no cash. They say, 'Don't add the tip to the bill.' They argue the system won't allow it. They have to wait to get the tip at the end of the month with their wages. Pay the tip now and they can celebrate tonight. They have to share their tip with all the staff.
     Hotel restaurant bills add service and when that's added to the hotel bill another 10% is added to the whole bill at the end. So you pay another ten percent service on the ten percent you've already paid.
Governments think jobs requiring tips mean staff don't pay taxes. Staff relying on tips don't get health cover, sickness benefit, pensions.
Staff not appearing on a pay roll may be illegal immigrants. That's why they are hiding at the back and only come out to serve if you charge into the kitchen hunting for them.
The UK has a minimum wage. Tips are optional. Restaurants charging over 10% don't get more business nor reviews.
If tips ensure promptitude - maybe we should be like the story of the millionaire who tore a banknote in half and said, 'If I get good service I give you both halves. If not, I take back this half.'

Free Pavement Libraries and Boat Libraries

Great idea, especially in poor countries and poor areas but even if you do it in a rich area the poorer people who work there or walk through can help themselves and help each other. Yes, do copy this idea. Selling or giving away books to energise people and educate them and encourage trade has been done in various places over the past centuries. The bookshop village at Hay in Wales is breeding others around the world, Europe and Japan. Now in 2012 internet news is telling us about a TV programme showing us Nanie in Manila in the Philippines who started his home library with old textbooks to help educate and entertain the poor.
The first British libraries had the same aim. So did Sassoon's helping students in Bombay.
Nanie's books on boats reach the remote islands. I must search for the TV programme and watch it.
Guesthouses I've seen in the UK and New Zealand have leave or take a book on a bookshelf. Most of their books are holiday reading, novels and guidebooks.
You can take magazines to your doctor's, or dentist's if they have out of date magazines. I offered my doctors' surgery magazines - such a waste to throw them away unread as I'd bought craft magazines and children's magazines for the free gift and only glanced at each page.
A London gym also has a book table for people sitting on bikes or waiting for each other. Or maybe to educate the sporty types?
I was shocked when London boroughs, such Harrow and Brent, started closing libraries. Libraries already had regular sales of old battered books. People protested when local newspapers reported that book not sold were thrown away - not even given to local charity shops. They claimed the cost of sending books overseas prevented books being donated to poor countries. Mobile phones and computers are being recycled and carried free by some airlines to countries where schools need equipment.
What could stop you or anybody else doing this and how can you overcome the impediments? In England we have rain unpredictably all year which is not good for book boxes and shelves. But the solution is simple. A church lych gate. An awning. A porch roof. Nanie opened his home and garage. Indoors at a town hall or doctor's surgery.
My doctor's receptionist said I could not put magazines on the table but she had to check them first. Why? I suppose in case they were adult subjects or promoting a religious or political cause which could offend somebody. Or just dirty - spreading germs to the vulnerable at the doctors. Yet hospital waiting rooms have magazines to cheer and distract those waiting, whether it's a short or long wait. So helpful.
Here's an extra incentive to start a book borrowing service or book giving box. Use it to honour your ancestors or local saints and heroes. Nanie started it in memory of his parents.
In the UK in addition to rain we have laws about what you can put on pavements in High streets. You must not obstruct. But I've seen neighbours put out boxes of unwanted apples so they don't go to waste. Americans and others put unwanted goods on the pavements once a year. The internet has a Freeserve service which allows you to list things you are happy to give away, to recycle them and save yourself taking a trip to the tip.
Asian and oriental shops put up flower displays when they open. (Not just the owners. Often gift tags show the flowers were donated by suppliers or benefactors.) Surely any newly opened shop could put a box of free books on the doorstep. A restaurant or coffee bar could do the same to attract customers. Authors have donated books left at railway stations and each reader writes in their name and/or a comment and passes the book on. The author eventually gets feedback, or, at very least distribution to an audience. So, giving books - a commercial idea, and a charity idea.

Do Not Resuscitate - Man Suing NHS

September 2012 a man in a UK hospital is suing staff for putting Do Not Resuscitate routinely on his notes, apparently following guidelines.
He has Down's syndrome and Altzheimer's (if anybody doesn't know the term, one symptom is loss of memory) and is being fed through the stomach by tube.
Why not? Because:
1 Even if medical staff ask family permission it's easy to persuade the patient who feels miserable or the next of kin who feels anxious that the patient has no quality of life. Other members of the family may be more objective and know differently.
2 Family don't realise how upset they will feel at the death.
3 It's not just 'hurt feeling' about not being consulted. Carers, mothers, others, who've devoted all day every day to looking after somebody, are devasted, sometimes suicidal, when their whole reason for living is snatched away. It's also common to feel guilty and go on worrying for years 'if only I had done more to save them'.
4 Doctors can make mistakes. The patient may recover. Many no hope cases have gone on to have healthy or healthy but happy or successful lives which were valuable to themselves or others.
5 The public suspects that if the hospital or staff are having a bad or busy day somebody will say, 'Get one/all of the Do Not Resuscitate patients and accidentally nudge the drip or the patient'.
6 My father was asked if he wanted Do Not Resuscitate put on my mother. He said yes. But I, the daughter, later regretted that. I just thought, what would my mother have said if it had been me? I was her only child. She was my only mother.

l I hope one day we will also have chips at a cemetery entrance to show locations.
And removed gravestones.

BBC News - Denmark pioneers hi-tech graveyard memorials with QR code

www.bbc.co.uk

Denmark is installing graveyard technology which gives visitors instant data about the lives of the deceased, the BBC's Malcolm Brabant reports.

via the BBC website

Funerals worldwide, mourning birds warning and fasting for safety

Scrub Jays (observed by researchers in California) gather around dead birds, apparently mourning, and signal to other birds when they see a dead bird or a predator. This protects the group from danger.
I read about this in the news on the internet. Information about birds 'mourning' not only increases our appreciation of animal behaviour but helps us analayse why we like to be informed of predators and deaths which might indicate danger in our vicinity.

I had to research the reasons behind mourning customs after the death of my father, following instructions as to how to prepare the house for the funeral prayers.  Was I supposed to dress a certain way, prepare food, expect others to bring food, not eat?

From the research on birds I can see that not eating when mourning the dead has dual benefits. I always thought human mourners stopped eating because they were too upset. A secondary reason is being too busy with funerals to cook.

Not foraging gives mourners more time (as some animals spend all day eating). The mourners, especially birds and animals, spend less time hunting alone which could endanger you (whether bird/animal/human) from predators. What's more, you eliminate the danger of the family mourners, or others in the vicinity, eating something poisonous which killed the dead.

To give a few examples: poisonous berries on a nearby plant killing birds, salmonella in the household chicken, serial killer in the office or wicked stepmother or stepfather.

The group funeral makes the youngsters come together and learn about danger. This strategy protects the group, even if nobody knows the source of the poison or even that the dead bird/animal/human was poisoned.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts. I have other posts on funerals in different countries, Christian and Jewish.