Do you struggle in parties and events while giving a speech? Are you a natural attention seeker, e.g., the life of the party? Do you have a significant speech coming up, but you’re worried it’s going to be flat and boring? If any of these sounds like you, then then this article might be for you.
In this article, I am going to describe how to add humour to your speech and help spread a little bit of joy in an otherwise, daunting endeavour.
Do you remember the kids in school — the naturally gifted with speech ones? It was like they always knew the right words to say. They didn’t even need a script to follow, they just knew by default. And it usually seemed like these guys always had the best sense of humour.
Who wouldn’t want to be like that? People naturally gravitate to them and, by consequence, give them a lot of attention, and for God’s sake, who doesn’t need attention in this world.
In college, people are more conscious of their image. Boys need something to attract girls, and most often than not, there was a reason for all the boys. Why? Because the guy with the great sense of humour, always attracted the girls. Which is not 100% true, but we often think that way. We often think that the funniest one in the room gets all of the advantages in life. So, let’s dig in and see how we can add humour into your speech and help you be the life of the party.
You might be thinking, “Is there a course for that? Is there a technique? Is there a book to consult?” Well, don’t panic. Trust me; there isn’t a book that can make your sense of humour, expert, overnight. There are no courses that will show you the right things to say to make people laugh by your conversation. It all boils down to the way you talk and your timing, according to the situation and conversation. Here are the tips.
1. Try to Get Involved with the Crowd
Getting involved with others is a common approach towards gaining knowledge, experience, and increasing intellectual skills while in a group. This also encourages you to interact with people out of a reason. Most people who make conversation humorous spent hours crafting their skills by involving the crowd in their speech.
Don’t go and ask any stranger to talk to you for no reason. Instead, go and speak to the people you know and participate in their discussion positively. Interjecting yourself into the conversation will enhance your knowledge and intrapersonal skills as well.
2. Watch Interviews and Listen to Other Speeches
You have free access to the internet (hopefully). If you can’t find a crowd to be in, which is probably true due to COVID, the internet is the next best thing.
This is a tool that will give you the flexibility of research and the ability to approach different subjects at the same time.
There are numerous interviews of celebrities, and humour shows where you can learn more about humour. It’s all about observation. The more you observe, the more you will learn about it.
There are popular shows like The Office, 30 Rock, Friends, Modern Family, and Parks and Recreation, where you can get the chance to see how celebrities and public figures talk to each other in a joking manner.
All of these things will make you a keen observer, which will let you observe real-life events and conversations in a new light.
Always make your eyes and ears open for particular techniques observed in the interviews and talk shows.
3. Find Out Things that Makes You Laugh
What’s your daily source of laughter? Is it a TV show, Movie, YouTube Video, Netflix Series, a Book, your in-laws?
A good exercise is to write down, “What makes you laugh” during all of the activities listed above. Dig in and find out what caused you to laugh.
Maybe the lines from the movie are very natural, or you find these lines very close to you. Whatever the reason you see, just remember the purpose and aim to add that reason into your speech. If you liked the shows because the comedy was natural, then add inherent humour to the speech. If you laughed at your father in law struggling with technology, add that into your speech.
You may like puns, observational humour, rants or double entendres, whatever you want, just include that in the speech.
4. Start with Writing Something
When you start writing your speech, it’s natural to elaborate on your opinions and feelings. More so than during a conversation.
Also, if you don’t usually make conversation or are introverted, it might be tough for you to talk for a while. Your mind will not support you to think fast and deliver immediately.
It helps to know things about a specific topic. With your knowledge, you can structure it into a sentence or statement and verbally express it succinctly. This is a complex process for many groups of people, whereas, for extraverts, it’s natural.
So get started writing something. This will organize your mind to make your script and speech more genuine, more organized, and pre-prepared.
Writing can also make you more accurate about your feelings. You can add and delete words into it as you need. Remember, nothing is ever permanent, except elementary school records. Segment your speech to add critical points into it and think about the position of time you can add something funny into it.
Try segmenting the minor details to get to the factual information associated with it. Then you can add some humour to it.
5. Experience
Now, what do I mean by experience? It’s time you’ve spent executing a proper routine at work. It may be 10 years, or it might be 10 months. The time associated with the job you have done called your experience.
Anyone comfortable with their job, usually finds their mind relaxed as well. Their minds are trained throughout the years to react in a predictable way to stimuli.
It never bothers them to respond to someone. But it also takes time to reach that level of comfort. So try to involve yourself more in conversations, to get some more experience.
All of the tips above are ways to make you able to add humour into your conversation or speech. But remember one thing, no one became an expert at anything overnight, maybe except for sleeping.
If so, then building up your speaking skills will also take time. Always make sure you have patience inside of you to generate worth from your hard work. It might take a while to get comfortable with speech and nail the humour, but when you do, it will be electrifying. The more you learn, the more you will enjoy it.