Importance
If you have several topics to cover in a single speech where would you put the most important? First or last? Write upon a piece of paper the position you choose. You have given this plan some thought so you doubtlessly put down the correct position. What did you write? First? That is usually the answer of nine pupils out of every ten.
Are you with the majority? If you wrote that the most important topic should be treated first, you are wrong. The speech would be badly planned. Think for a moment. Which should be the most important part of a story or a play? The beginning or the ending? If it is the early part, why should any one read on to the end or stay for the curtain to come down the last time? So in speeches the importance of topics should always increase as the speech proceeds. This, then, is a principle of planning. Arrange your topics in an ascending order of importance. Work up to what is called the climax.
"If you wrote that the most important topic should be treated first, you are wrong. The speech would be badly planned."
The list you made in response to direction 5 given above should now be presented to the class and its contents discussed. What kind of material is likely to be arranged according to each of your principles? You have put down the chronological order, or the order of time, or some similar phrase. Just what do you mean by that?
Do you mean, begin with the earliest material and follow in chronological order down to the latest? Could the reverse order ever be used? Can you cite some instance? Is contrast a good order to follow in planning? Cite material which could be so arranged. Would an arrangement from cause to effect be somewhat like one based on time? Explain your answer. Under what circumstances do you think the opposite might be used—from effect to cause?
While there are almost countless methods of arrangements—for any one used in one part of a speech may be combined with any other in some different portion—the plan should always be determined by three fundamental matters; the material itself, the audience to which it is to be presented, and the effect the speaker wants to produce.
Even during this preliminary planning of the speech the author must be careful that when his arrangement is decided upon it possesses the three qualities necessary to every good composition. These three are unity, coherence, and emphasis.