Your Speech Coach

One of the best ways to create humor in your speech is to tell a story. You can always find a story: about a happy client, how a product was developed or how a project was carried out. A story draws us in. And then you add details. Details create pictures, sounds and smells that put us in the moment with the speaker. And stories can easily become laugh-out-loud funny by adding exaggeration to those details, so the images and sounds take us to someplace we don’t expect. Surprises are funny!

One of the things I do for my speech coaching clients is to help them add humor to their presentations. Sometimes I do this with them face-to-face, sometime they send me the notes of their speech and I email them the changes. Recently I did a comedy “punch up” to an already wonderful story written by an Endodontist (they do root canals) in Florida. He was preparing to share the story of the reroofing of his office, and the huge list of problems the roof repair caused. His audience for the story was the general dentists that refer patients to him. This Endodontist is a warm, gregarious person, but the story he wrote sounded too much like a rant of complaints and his wonderful sense of humor needed to come through.

I want to share with you, a few of the changes I made to his piece so you can see how you can tweak your next speech to make it funny or funnier.

 

Change One:

The original opening was dry and not worded to bring the listener in. “I want to share with you my horrendous week in July.” Few people want to hear about someone’s bad day, much less a bad week. Audiences need to open up to you to laugh with you.

So try to draw the listener in by resonating with their lives. I made a change that was not in itself funny, but was designed to get the audience nodding their heads as they identified with the speaker.

My Change:

“Have you ever had one of those bad weeks in your practice where everything seems to go wrong? You know a week when you were ready to send up a white flag and yell “I surrender!” Recently I had one of those weeks.”

 

To make this bit funny I suggested the doctor raise his hand in the air as if he was raising a white flag and wave it as he yelled, “I surrender!” You can often make an action or object you describe with words in your speech funnier by gesturing and using facial expressions.

Change Two:

He had a simple description of what happened with the AC’s were removed as part of the roof replacement.

 

My Change:

“On Monday the roofers took the three ACs, which I had just purchased off my roof to redo some electrical work. The resultant holes leave the roof looking like a giant piece of Swiss cheese. It’s summer…which means Florida rain…You guessed it. Swiss cheese is great on a sandwich but I do not recommend it as roofing material.”

Change Three:

He listed the damages to the office.

My Change:

“Monday we come in to the office and we are greeted by a downpour of rain INSIDE the office. We had been thinking of putting a small fountain in the lobby. A tsunami, not so much.”

Change Four:

A description of the wet carpet is tweaked, by adding in descriptive details so the audience can image walking on the carpet themselves. Then some of some of those surprising exaggerated details were added.

My Change:

“The carpets wet enough to pass for creek beds. We pull up the pant legs of our scrubs and wade in. By the afternoon were expecting minnows, bull frogs and large mouth bass.” “I consider adding fishing rods to the patient chairs.” “Hummm I could start another business. “Cruise into our office and get a root canal and fish dinner!”

The creek bed is the first detail and that in itself is a surprise. That could make an audience smile, but adding the fish and bullfrogs goes beyond description to a bigger surprise that will hopefully get a laugh, then once the audience is up you can surprise them again with another detail, in this case the fish dinner. To write this kind of humor list all the things associated with the premise. The premise here was water so I brainstormed a list of water items. To make the delivery funnier I suggested he actually mime walking in and hiking up his pants and pretending to fish.

Change Five:

The fans and humidifiers from Chem Dry, used to dry out the office, are wonderfully described in the original piece by the doctor-as sounding like jets taking off. In this change I take his idea of jets and juxtapose it with the reality of treating patients. Think about what happens when we sit in a dental chair. Now think about what happens when we sit in an airplane and put those two things together.

My Change:

“As we seat the patients, we consider asking them to fasten their seat belts, put the dental trays in the full upright position and give them peanuts and ginger ale after take off.”

In the doctor’s original speech he shares how he has to project his voice over the loud jet noise. I exaggerate that to say.

“I develop a deep airport announcer voice that projects over the noise to both my assistants and patients. By Tuesday, I am announcing regular take offs and landings.”

Change Six:

The doctor describes coming in later in the week to another flood. He makes a wonderful humorous reference to Noah’s ark. I take that a little further.

My Change:

“I then walk out into my hallway to be greeted by yet another flood; I check the parking lot for the ark with animals being loaded two by two.“

To make the delivery of this piece funnier I suggest he walk over to the side of the stage and put his hand out above his head as if he is gazing out the window to see the animals coming out of the ark.

The doctor relates other calamities, fire alarms going off, computer breakdowns, a pest control problem and a loss of internet connections. The last mishap makes he and his wife miss their dinner plans at the club and end up eating at Checkers hamburger joint. I think that is already funny. But you can make comparisons funnier by adding in the details. Let’s just imagine the differences between those two dinners.

“Our wonderful dinner plans at the club change slightly; instead of the beef Wellington at the field club with a view of the water, we eat beef on a bun at Checkers with a view of the parking lot.” “I love how the sun sets on the asphalt.”

I have added throughout the speech a running gag. With each calamity, I give him a new job, with the jet sound he becomes an airport announcer, with the fire alarm he becomes a fireman, with the second flood he becomes Noah, with the creek bed carpet fishing he is a fishing cruise director, the pest problem he becomes a pest control guy. His audience knows he is thinking of retiring so he can stop working so much, so they see the inside joke of having even more jobs.

Change Seven:

At the end of the speech he originally said he was looking forward to another “relaxing” day of work tomorrow.

 

My Change:

“I am now finally home, dry and looking forward to tomorrow’s new adventure at work. I have already been an airport announcer, fireman, Noah, fishing cruise director, and pest control guy–what adventurous job awaits me next? Who could ever want to retire and miss all this fun???”

Change Eight:

The last change is to the end of the speech. The original ending is good. The doctor talks about his great staff. But the purpose of the speech for the doctor is to connect to the physicians that refer patients to him, so he wants to say something that makes them feel confident in him and his staff.

My change:

“I love what I do and I am blessed with the wonderful patients that I so appreciate you sending me. I am truly looking forward to going to work tomorrow. If you love what you do and have a great team behind you, any environment can be bearable…for a limited time that is! Let’s say less than 40 days and 40 nights. And as you enjoy your labor day, a celebration of occupations, remember to enjoy as I do all the jobs that life brings your way.”