“How to make a presentation” is among the most popular keyword search terms on the internet because everyone wants to know how to present well when discussing something in front of so many people, especially strangers. It also happens to be the topic of a lot of books on exactly what can be done to ensure that people like what you say.
Presentation skills will not sprout up out of nowhere overnight, of course, especially from any book, much less any ol’ book on the topic, of which there are a great number going back thousands of years, even. But as with anything in life practice should make perfect and the key is to very much take to heart what these kinds of books have to offer.
By the same token, a professional speaker knows many things that are not in such books, things which require the kind of first-hand experience that’s honed over many years or at least many attempts. You get better at something by doing it, and like any art the art of public speaking requires not just an understanding of the theory but actual mastery of the practice.
Another way of becoming a better speaker could be, ironically enough, to try one’s hand at writing. Such an exercise frees up the soul, in time anyway, which is a necessary ingredient for successfully engaging a crowd: the ability to invest all of your heart and soul in delivering a message. By the same token, writing, real writing, should engender an expansion of the mind (or “soul”) such that one’s very capacity for the recently mentioned “heart and soul” should also increase.
Unorthodox musings, to be sure, and maybe not immediately practical, or ever practiceable – but it is the truth, all the same: delivery has to do with character, in the sense of who and what one really is. Writing (and, by a further extension, reading) may help bring it all out.
