You’ve got the speech booked, and it’s an important one.  Of course, they’re all important, or you wouldn’t say ‘yes’, but this one is special.  It’s the audience, the venue, the occasion – they are all super cool.  You want it to go well.

So, rather than indulge in your usual bad habit of winging that important speech, you’ve resolved to rehearse.  What’s the best way to go about it?  Following are some tips for getting the most out of your rehearsal time.

As soon as you can, ‘freeze’ the script. Many speakers are tempted to continue to tinker with the script up until the moment they walk on stage.  I vividly remember making changes to the teleprompter for a certain governor’s ‘state of the state’ speech an hour before the event, when the staff was busy setting up the chairs and tidying up the hall.  I crouched just underneath the stage with the teleprompter operator making changes directly onto the scrolling teleprompter script with its primitive word processing system.  The result was that the final script had ‘carriage returns’ in it so that the teleprompter operator had to speed up through the blank spaces, then hit the brakes when he saw words again.  The result was a certain hesitation on the part of the governor that made his speech seem occasionally halting and uncertain.

Don’t do that.  Settle on the words and lock them in at least 3 weeks before the event, longer if the stakes are super high.  You need time to get the speech into your muscle memory.  You can always update a phrase here or there if conditions change but avoid the tendency to keep improving the script.  That usually is nerves ‘talking’ and rarely results in significant improvements.

Record the speech and play it on walks, runs, drives, and anything else repetitive you do before the event.  Hearing your own voice read the script calmly and effectively will begin to set it in your muscle memory.  Speak it along with the recording.  Repeat often.

Break the speech into chunks and rehearse them out of order.  I can always tell when a speaker has rehearsed a speech from start to finish each time.  The energy is high at the beginning and tails off toward the end, rather than finishing strong as it should.  Instead, divide the speech up into manageable chunks and deliberately take the chunks in different order at different rehearsals to learn the speech thoroughly and be prepared to deliver the whole thing with pizzazz.

Spend time connecting your motion on stage with the moments of the speech.  Even professionals often fail to rehearse this way, and it amazes me.  What we get on stage, then, is random motion from the speaker, typically too much, as he or she seeks to discharge the adrenaline energy by walking around.  Instead, tie this part of the speech to that place on stage.  You’ll find that this connection helps you remember the words far more easily.  It turns out that the hippocampus manages both memory and movement; so there’s even a great neuroscientific reason why you should do this.  Place and memory are deeply connected! It will both help you manage your nerves and remember your speech.

Memorize the flow of the speech, not the specific words.  I prefer a speech that knows where it’s going but that has a conversational feel.  To do that, know what you are going to say when, but not as a recitation.  Rather, be ready to paraphrase yourself.  In this way, you can stay present to the moment and sound like a real human being.  And you can make minor alterations as you go, as needed, if the response of the audience is telling you to speed up or slow down or pause for questions.

Practice the speech with different emotional tones.  Do one reading (in rehearsal) as if you were angry, another as if you can barely contain your hilarity.  Try a whole range of emotional responses and see what works best.  You’ll get different ‘readings’ and make the speech far more interesting.  Don’t overdo the emotional switch-ups, however; a 30-minute speech with 30 emotional variations will be exhausting for you and for the audience.  At most, have 4 – 6 emotional ‘beats’.

You won’t over rehearse and get stale; that’s a myth.  You will fully inhabit the talk in a way that will allow you to be completely present on stage, for the audience, and for the moment.  The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.  Don’t throw away your chance to do exactly that.