There’s a very good chance that the character in your contest speech stories is you yourself. Why not? You only know a few of another person’s experiences but you know all of yours. It just gives you more experiences, anecdotes and stories to choose from.
If the tales are about you, you need to stand back and view yourself objectively (well, as objectively as possible) as a character in a story.
Let’s look at a simple example. Your theme is ‘Peace” and you have decided on three stories. The first is you, as a child, fighting with your brother. Your mother intervenes and gives you the message “Let peace start with you” You shrug it off and give your brother a thump on the way out of the room.
Next story: You are all grown up and married and having your first serious row with your spouse. After days of argument you realize the importance of your marriage and you take the first step towards reconciling. You are starting to learn. Repeat of mothers words here.
Third story: You are a parent, and your child disobeys you and causes a problem. You are angry and open your mouth to shout words that will hurt and cause discord in your home. You remember your mother’s words and stop. You deal with the problem without anger. You have learned your important lesson. You repeat her words
These three tales are united by you, the main character in each of them. You are the focus, you carry the message. So, who are you? No point telling me you are a sales rep. for Blank corporation, shoot a mean game of golf and go to church on Sunday. As far as this story is concerned I don’t really care. Your theme here (to my way of thinking) is personal growth from anger to an attitude of constructive peace. Which aspects of your character are important here?
That you are rather hot-tempered and tend to lash out, but you’re trying to curb that? That you think family is important? That sometimes you carry work stress home? That you and your brother are very close now (or not close at all)? That your mother is dead now but her words of wisdom influenced you strongly? All of these are aspects of your character that could be important in this series of anecdotes or stories. Are you forceful? Do you hold back your rage until it just boils over? Are you controlled? Controlling?
You will be doing some – possibly uncomfortable – self-analysis in order to give your character a strong place in your story. If you avoid or work around one of your truths you will weaken your story.
It’s much easier to be objective if the character is someone else. You can start off with the focus of the character. “He was the most…… man I ever knew”. Most angry, most forgiving, most positive. Slam, bang, focus. The story will be all about how that one strong characteristic affected his life and the lives of those around him. Could you say something like that about yourself?
Speech strength in a character comes from tightly focused, visually presented characteristics…. so angry the veins stood out on his temple…so relaxed I thought he had fallen asleep….so cool he had different sunglasses for different events.
The characteristics strengthen the character, who strengthens the story, that strengthens the contest speech.
(Now I know how to spell ’strengthens’. It’s not as easy as it looks.)
