How to Write an Original Oratory

Choosing and Researching Your Topic

Familiarize yourself with your guidelines. Make sure you're familiar with any applicable rules, whether you're participating in a competition debate or writing an oratory for a class. Know your maximum allotted time, which is generally under ten minutes, and make sure you're well acquainted with the judging or grading rubric. Keep the parameters and guidelines in mind while choosing a topic, outlining, and writing the oratory. If you have any questions, ask your teacher or debate coach for clarity.

Choose a topic that gets you excited. You can choose almost any topic for your original oratory. This flexibility can be overwhelming, but you should see it as an opportunity to share information about something that matters to you. Since you'll have to do lots of research, you should choose a topic that you find important and exciting. Your topic should be culturally relevant and appeal to broad audiences, but shouldn't be cliche or overdone. If you're passionate about do it yourself (DIY) knowledge, for example, you could write an oratory about the value of widely available DIY education.

Decide whether your speech will be informative or persuasive. An original oratory can inform your audience about a topic or persuade them to accept your argument. When you start planning your speech, decide if you'd rather share information with your audience or convince them of something. For instance, you might decide that you want to persuade your audience that DIY education has personal, societal, and economical benefits. Or, perhaps you want to inform your audience about the destruction of the wetlands and extinction of plant and animal species in wetlands across the globe.

Research your topic. Whether your intent is to inform or persuade, you'll need to cultivate thorough knowledge on your topic and support your oratory with evidence. Think of your original oratory as a school research paper. You can begin with broad search terms (like “destruction of wetlands”) and narrow them down (such as “beaver population declined from 1980-2018”) as you hone your focus. Choose sources such as reputable periodicals, encyclopedias, authoritative books, and scientific journals.

Composing Your Original Oratory

Develop a thesis. You have lots of flexibility when it comes to formatting an original oratory, but you should structure your speech around a concise thesis. A thesis is one sentence that clearly states your argument and provides a road map for the rest of your speech. Your thesis should convey to your audience the speech's purpose and stance. Be clear and direct instead of including words like "This speech is about" before your thesis. If your topic is DIY education, your thesis could be, “Making do it yourself knowledge widely available is essential to contemporary society.”

Support your thesis with at least 3 main points. Your 3 points will provide evidence that supports your thesis, and you'll discuss them in detail in your speech's body. You'll state the thesis and main points in the introduction, expand and defend them in your speech's body, and summarize them in a conclusion. For your speech about DIY education, your main points could deal with the personal, practical, and economic benefits of DIY education. You'd use one section in your body to expand on each benefit.

Write the body of your speech. Write your speech as you would an academic paper. Everyone writes differently, and some people prefer to write the introduction first, the body second, and the conclusion last. However, organizing the body of your speech first can help you summarize your main points more concisely in your introduction and conclusion. When you organize the body of your speech, don't spend too much or too little time on 1 or 2 points. Try to balance your time equally between your points, and make sure you're familiar with your time limit or permitted word count. For example, you could spend 1-2 paragraphs discussing the personal pride that comes with completing a DIY project on your own. You could then spend a couple of paragraphs discussing practical benefits, like being able to handle a medical emergency. Finally, you can talk about the money and resources one saves by completing a DIY project on their own.

Choose your citations wisely. While you should include evidence in the body of your speech to support your points, you'll need to strike a balance between statistics, insight, and personal connection to the topic. Keep in mind that most speech competitions have limits on the number of quoted words you use, so be selective and only include the strongest available evidence. When you choose your citations, don't twist or misrepresent a source to fit your agenda.

Cite your sources in your speech. Don't forget to document your source both verbally when you deliver the speech and in the written script. Your verbal citations should be thorough enough that your audience could find them on their own for further research. You can typically use any manual style, like MLA, but you should check with your teacher or debate coach to verify which is best for your assignment. For example, cite a source by saying, "According to a 2012 study by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, community education outside of the classroom provides medical students with more robust knowledge and better patient interaction skills." This quote does not contain unnecessary details that would disrupt the flow of the speech, but it does clearly display the source.

Consider including a rebuttal to an opposing point of view. Including a perspective that opposes your argument is a great way to strengthen your case. Include a paragraph that summarizes an opposing statement, then include evidence to the contrary to prove that your argument is more valid. You could include, for instance, a source that calls DIY a form of dilettantism or dabbling. Then you could refute this argument as dismissive and short-sighted by citing examples of individuals who have cultivated in-depth DIY knowledge on a variety of subjects.

Write your introduction and conclusion. The introduction should grab the audience's attention, state the problem your thesis addresses, and lay down your solution's roadmap. The conclusion must be a strong, concise restatement of your thesis and main points. Once you've organized the body of your speech, you'll have a better idea of how to structure the introduction and conclusion. In general, follow this structure: tell your audience what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them. Avoid clichés, such as, “According to Webster's dictionary, this is defined as…”

Have others read your speech. Once you've written and revised your oratory, have other people critique its content and format. Have an English teacher or professor read it and give you feedback on the quality of your writing. Ask your peers to read it to gauge whether your topic and presentation style appeal to broad audiences. It's also a good idea to practice giving your speech in front of a small audience so you can get feedback on your delivery.

Delivering Your Speech

Memorize your speech. An original oratory is typically a memorized speech. Start memorizing your speech as soon as you've drafted it. Don't wait until the last minute or your grade or competition performance will reflect your procrastination. To memorize your speech, break it up into smaller sections. Work on memorizing a few sentences at a time, then a paragraph, then nail an entire section. Try rewriting 2 or 3 sentences and saying them out loud as you write. Writing, speaking, and reading at the same time will help your brain create more connections, helping you memorize your content.

Time your delivery. Generally, you'll have less than 10 minutes to deliver your original oratory. Use a stopwatch or your phone's clock to time yourself. Give yourself some wiggle room of at least 30-60 seconds, just in case you take a little longer to deliver your speech than in practice. Give yourself plenty of time to deliver your speech clearly so you don't have to speak so quickly that your audience can't understand you.

Make eye contact to connect with your audience. Since your speech will be memorized, it's especially vital to use facial expressions and eye contact to connect with your audience. Practice your speech in the mirror to make sure your expressions are natural and project confidence. If you're nervous about making eye contact, look slightly above your audience to create the illusion that you're maintaining eye contact.

Use gestures effectively. Use gestures and movements to reinforce your most important points. However, don't use unnatural or repetitive gestures, like raising your hands in the same exact way every time. If you're not confident in your ability to mix up your gestures naturally, just keep your hands loosely folded or by your side.