Writing and Speaking
paulgraham.com
Writing and Speaking
1–10 of 240 posts
Re: Writing and Speaking
#2An opinion by Nassim Taleb on the subject (posted on his facebook page):
"I have been told by conference organizers and other rationalistic, empirically challenged fellows that one needs to be clear, deliver a crisp message, maybe even dance on the stage to get the attention of the crowd. Or speak with the fake articulations of T.V. announcers. Charlatans try sending authors to “speech school”. None of that. I find it better to whisper, not shout. Better to slightly unaudible, less clear. Acquire a strange accent. One should make the audience work to listen, and switch to intellectual overdrive. (In spite of these rules of thumb by the conference industry, there is no evidence that demand for a speaker is linked to the TV-announcer quality of his lecturing). And the most powerful, at a large gathering, tends to be the one with enough self-control to avoid raising his voice to be noticed, and make others listen to him."
Re: Writing and Speaking
#3I like the format of a talk to spur my interest in a certain topic. (like the TED talks)
It would be nice when every talk would be accompanied by a text that deepens the subject, so I can read more about it.
Although a talk is nice, I am always left with a feeling that it barely scratched the surface of the topic.
As a side note: pg, you are a very good writer, you should write more books, please? :)
Re: Writing and Speaking
#4would be great to get Scott Berkun opinion on this (I enjoyed his "Confessions of a Public Speaker" http://www.speakerconfessions.com/)
Re: Writing and Speaking
#5It's worth noting that a very good speaker often puts the exact amount of hard content needed. Many times you can see a bad speaker who is bad, not for their ums and speaking quality, but because they attempt to put too much detail or too many points into their speech. This is better for text, where people can examine at their own rate.
Re: Writing and Speaking
#6An opinion by Nassim Taleb on the subject (posted on his facebook page): "I have been told by conference organizers and other rationalistic, empirically challenged fellows that one needs to be clear, deliver a crisp message, maybe even dance on the stage to get the attention of the crowd. Or speak with the fake articulations of T.V. announcers. Charlatans try sending authors to “speech school”. None of that. I find i…
One of my favourite perks when I worked at the Guardian is that any employee can go along to the morning editorial meetings. They were absolutely fascinating - a 40 minute meeting where the editorial direction for the day's newspaper is fleshed out, by an extremely smart and well informed group of people, with absolutely nothing dumbed down.
One of the thing that really struck me about those meetings was how Alan Rusbridger, the newspaper's editor, set the tone. He has a relatively quiet voice, and as a result the room stayed quiet enough that you could almost hear a pin drop. When he spoke, everyone listened intently. This influenced the whole meeting - people never spoke over each other, everyone paid full attention and a huge amount of information and discussion was covered effectively in a very short space of time.
Re: Writing and Speaking
#7The philosopher William Godwin basically said: if you have any criticism of my work, or anything to say, write it down.
He thought public speaking relied too much on rhetoric and emotion, whereas with writing it was easier for a sober consideration of the truth to be the prevailing factor.
Re: Writing and Speaking
#8I disagree with pg's opinion in that case. I think what he describes is correct as far as it applies to his style of speaking, but there are many cases where a speech format conveys information better and is more articulate than reading an essay. Think of TED talks for instance.
It's ok for any one person to perfer words, but not everyone prefers reading to a face to face meeting. If that were the case, imagine all the VC pitches consisting of reviewing business plans rather than live pitches.
Even YC places a lot of emphasis on the 10-minute interview in the selection process . So there must be something non-verbal happening, otherwise an exchange of emails would give founders a better opportunity to present the case for their startup.
Re: Writing and Speaking
#9I wouldn't say that I'm a good speaker, but I'm certainly a much better speaker than I used to be. It's not just about transmitting a certain number of bits of information per minute; it's also about making sure that those bits are being received at the other end. I often throw jokes (and quasi-jokes, like my "purpose of cryptography is to force the US government to torture you" line) into talks as a way to help keep the audience's attention; and I watch the audience for signs that I'm moving too fast or too slow for them.
But for all of this, I don't think the material I convey has suffered in the slightest. One audience member told me that my cryptography-in-one-hour talk was the "most densely packed hour of information" he had ever seen. If being a good speaker pushed me away from having and conveying good ideas, my talks should have been getting progressively less informative, not more so.
I posit that while PG is seeing a real effect, it's not the effect he thinks he's seeing. Rather than style detracting from substance, it seems to me that there's selection bias: In order to be invited to give talks, you must have at least one of {good ideas, good style}. As a result, those talks which are completely devoid of interesting ideas are inevitably given very well -- we never see talks which are given by poor speakers who have no interesting ideas. This in no way means that speaking well is responsible for the lack of substance.
Re: Writing and Speaking
#10pg, I think you are a good speaker. Not in the classic motivational speaker sense but you do speak with conviction and have a unique voice...both literally and in what you say. You are one of the few authors that I literally have your voice in my head when I am slowly reading one of your essays. At least among your target audience, what you have to say is much more important than how you say it. So keep rewriting your talks minutes before you give them, even if it leads you to say um during your speeches. As long as you continue to say what you truly believe, that'll shine through and you will continue to be a good speaker in my book.