Natural v scripted presentations

Let's have the best of both!

(*to listen rather than read scroll down and click the audio link below the image.)

Are you your natural self when you’re presenting, or do you become some kind of weird, scripted puppet? The puppet looks like you, but its movement is forced, and its voice sounds false.

Just like the posh voice did I heard my mother assume when she answered the telephone when I was a child. I knew it was wrong. A put-on.

In contrast, when we’re behaving naturally, how we express ourselves, our vocal variety and body language is organic. It arises directly from what we’re talking about. It looks and sounds congruent with who we are and our topic. We, the speech and ourselves, are in harmony.

A scripted puppet performance is imposed, an externally managed rendering or interpretation of how the presentation should be made. It's uncomfortable to watch or listen to because you sense the puppet master's prompts behind the speaker.

The gestures appear oddly artificial, and the voice is hollow despite its rise and fall of pitch, pace and pause. The disconnectedness of the person with their presentation creates empty theatricality - a triumph of style over substance. The result is dismissible in-congruency. You can't believe or trust the message, or the speaker.

What's a person to do? Is believability - naturalness, really a choice between scripted and rehearsed and 'going-with-the flow', letting what happens, happen? This is a debate I have frequently.

I've seen both. You will have too, and I want 'natural'. I loathe 'scripted' performances. I want to see and hear the real person. I want to feel connected to them. A 'talk by numbers' presentation alienates me. I feel like I've been fobbed off with a counterfeit production - something looking like the genuine article, but it isn't.

Natural v Scripted and rehearsal

However, the 'natural' I want is not 'rough and ready' and 'anything goes'. It's more refined. The positive natural qualities making the person unique are present and polished. The less than helpful, (and also natural), characteristics for example, unnecessary pacing, pocket fiddling, frequency of habitual filler words - like, yeah, um, you know, or habitual gestures like ear-pulling, will have been retired through focused rehearsal.

I think it's in the rehearsal process that the crux of the argument between natural v scripted lies. Scripted implies overlaying and replacing a speaker's natural expressiveness with something other. It could be a complete voice make over, a vocabulary and phrasing overhaul, total gestural orchestration - anything eradicating individual expression to the extent that the real person is lost.

Even spontaneity is pre-planned for maximum effect. A finished script is marked up for everything. This where you walk three paces to the front and smile. In this line you stress that word and pause after this one. Here you extend your left arm above your head and keep it there for the count of four. It becomes ridiculous - a sham.

Useful rehearsal is revealing and working with the best of ourselves. It's about lifting those characteristics clear of the clutter to allow them to faithfully carry the message we want to deliver - free of hindrance.

What about you? What have you found out about yourself as a presenter through rehearsal?

My principal finds were excessive use of small hand gestures - so many they became meaningless and distracting. Then there was hair twiddling - winding a lock around my fingers, particularly when reaching for the next idea. Which was also a reason for looking skyward while eyerolling.

Collectively they weakened my capacity to deliver a message authoritatively.

(There was also losing the thread of a topic to dive down attractive side roads. More on that another day.)

The result, when these natural tendencies went unchallenged, was compromise. I knew I could do better. It took thorough and honest rehearsal to show me how.

To me, that is very different from scripting. It's neither a pretend 'put on', nor a ‘put off’ for the audience. It's natural, nurtured and when it’s flowing easily, it’s wonderful.

Click the link if you want to find out more about the process of rehearsal. What you'll see is a very long way from prescriptive directives.

To listen click the green arrowhead.

Happy teaching, happy speaking.
Susan

PS. As I said last week, and I’ll say next, if you have ideas for topics you’d like to see covered in this newsletter, or if you’d like to share an article on some aspect of public speaking, or a speech of your own, please get in touch. Either reply to this email or contact me through the form on my about me page on my website. I’d love to hear from you!