By Scott Hepner

When you are starting out at a Toastmaster’s Club, one of the hardest things to do is figure out what to talk about. Once you have a subject, how do you go about preparing?

Should you write the whole speech out? Should you wing it? Should you just use talking points?

There are varying opinions on preparation and delivery. I think it depends on the situation.

Even if you eventually go with speaking off the cuff or just using bullet points, I would advocate you start by writing your speeches out.

Writing a speech out trains you to have a solid format of an introduction, a supporting body and conclusion. The objective is to get your idea into the audience’s head. Without structure, it often fails to do so.

Also, writing a speech teaches you how much content you need to fill a certain time limit. A well paced speech will be about 125 words per minute.