Making a Brief
The next step after making outlines or briefs of material already organized is to make your own from material you gather. Speeches you have already prepared or considered as fit for presentation will supply you with ideas if you cannot work up new material in a short time.
At first you will be more concerned with the form than the meaning of the entries, but even from the first you should consider the facts or opinions for which each topic or statement stands. Weigh its importance in the general scheme of details. Consider carefully its suitability for the audience who may be supposed to hear the finished speech. Discard the inappropriate. Replace the weak. Improve the indefinite. Be sure your examples and illustrations are apt.
Be wary about statistics. In listening to an address many people begin to distrust as soon as figures are mentioned. Statistics will illustrate and prove assertions, but they must be used judiciously. Do not use too many statistics. Never be too detailed. In a speech, $4,000,000 sounds more impressive than $4,232,196.96. Use round numbers. Never let them stand alone. Show their relationship. Burke quotes exact amounts to show the growth of the commerce of Pennsylvania, but he adds that it had increased fifty fold. A hearer will forget the numbers; he will remember the fact.
"Never be too detailed.... Use round numbers"
Similar reasons will warn you concerning the use of too many dates. They can be easily avoided by showing lapses of time—by saying, "fifty years later," or "when he was forty-six years old," or "this condition was endured only a score of months."
The chapters on introductions, conclusions, and planning material will have suggested certain orders for your briefs. Glance back at them for hints before you attempt to make the general scheme. Let two factors determine your resultant development—the nature of the material itself and the effect you want to produce.
In argumentative speeches a usual, as well as excellent, order is this:
1. Origin of the question. The immediate cause for discussion.
2. History of the question.
3. Definition of terms.
4. Main arguments.
5. Conclusion.
Why is the proposition worth discussing at this present time? Why do you choose it? Why is it timely? What is its importance? Why is a settlement needed? Any of these would fall under the first heading.
Has the matter engaged attention prior to the present? Has it changed? Was any settlement ever attempted? What was its result?
Are any of the words and phrases used likely to be misunderstood? Are any used in special senses? Do all people accept the same meaning? Good illustrations of this last are the ideas attached to socialism, anarchist, soviet, union.
To illustrate: the question of woman suffrage was brought into public interest once more by the advance woman has made in all walks of life and by the needs and lessons of the great war. To make clear how its importance had increased a speaker might trace its history from its first inception. As applied to women, what does "suffrage" mean exactly—the right to vote in all elections, or only in certain ones? Does it carry with it the right to hold office? Would the voting qualifications be the same for women as for men? Then would follow the arguments.
How could this scheme be used for a discussion of the Monroe Doctrine? For higher education? For education for girls? For child working laws? For a league of nations? For admitting Asiatic laborers to the United States? For advocating the study of the sciences? For urging men to become farmers? For predicting aerial passenger service? For a scholarship qualification in athletics? For abolishing railroad grade crossings? For equal wages for men and women?