It starts with structure
I finally got to see Hamilton on Broadway late last month and it was as amazing as everyone says! Since I am both a history buff and a theatre person, I was pretty sure I was going to love it. The music and story are familiar to me by now, but what really impressed me was the staging, choreography, and very specific use of space. The choices a director makes regarding the set, and how the actors move through the space defined by that set, reveal volumes about his plan to bring words and notes to life.
I also marveled at how the show's creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, shaped the script. I have read the Ron Chernow biography, and I have written a few plays myself based on history and biography. So I am always intrigued to see how other dramatists pick and choose which part of a true story to tell, how to minimize the need for "artistic license" while condensing a life or part of a life into two hours and change. I settled into my seat at the Richard Rogers Theatre that night with a few questions about the structure of Hamilton. But they were all answered when I saw the play. The choices Miranda made worked perfectly in the fully-realized production. Any holes I perceived were due to my partial experience of listening, not seeing.
I bring my playwrights' perspective of structure to my work with speaking clients. When crafting speeches we often run up against the same issues a playwright does: where to focus our story, which parts to tell, and how to structure the telling so the story is fully revealed. Often this means making decisions that are as painful for my clients as cutting a favorite character is for me. Or eliminating the third Cabinet Battle must have been for Lin-Manuel. But we have to be selective. We have to hold back some of the things we want to share, otherwise we confuse the audience. If we give them too much information or lead them down a mental side street we can lose them before we get to the main point. And then we have set ourselves up for failure, because audiences stop listening when their enthusiasm and interest evaporate.
Some of my clients realize this, but many don't think issues of structure and right-sizing pertain to their material or occasion. They think getting to the point is all that matters. So they do some sort of vague intro at the beginning, tick off their main points (often with far too great a level of detail) and conclude with "any questions?" And they wonder why their audiences are not engaged!
Take a tip from those of us writing plays whose source material covers decades, miles, and casts of thousands: find the essential story you want to tell and make sure everything you utter is a part of that story. Cut anything that is not (speakers, unlike playwrights, can save those bits for the Q & A). Your audience will stick with you. Because everyone always wants to know how it ends!