The document provides tips for generating audience interest in presentations by limiting length to 18 minutes, using multiple forms of supporting material, enlivening content through techniques like counterintuitive notions, relevancy, novelty, emotions, vivid descriptions, humor, and audience participation through questions, interactions, and activities. It emphasizes analyzing the audience and adapting the presentation accordingly.

1. Chapter 5.3
Generating Interest
Copyright © 2022 W. W. Norton & Company

2. Limit the Length of Your Presentation (1 of 2)
• Some of the most famous speeches in history were quite brief
• The optimum duration for which people can listen to and retain
information is eighteen minutes
• Depending on the rhetorical situation, it might be wise to prepare
two versions of your presentation:
• One that matches the assigned speaking time
• One that is half of that
2

3. Limit the Length of Your Presentation (2 of 2)
• The following questions that can help you trim and revise your
presentation:*
• Will audience members be able to reach the conclusion you
want without your help?
• Do you have too many examples or stories, potentially
distracting listeners from your message?
• Have you said the same thing in too many different ways?
• Is the audience already inclined to believe what you’re saying?
• Does the audience definitely need to know this?
3

4. Use Multiple Forms of Supporting Material and Language Styles
• You are more likely to generate audience interest if you use
multiple forms of supporting material
• Use well-designed presentation aids or provide clear handouts to
visually reinforce your message
• Stylistic devices, such as repetition and metaphors, can help you
emphasize or clarify a key point or concept
4

5. Enliven Your Content
• The following are ways to get your audience to sit up and listen:
• Counterintuitive Notions
• Relevancy
• Consequential Information
• Novelty
• Emotions
• Vivid Descriptions
5

6. Counterintuitive Notions
• If you say something that contradicts audience expectations, their
interest may be aroused
We gather here, 14 days on from our darkest of hours. In the days
that have followed the terrorist attacks on the 15th of March, we
have often found ourselves without words.
What words adequately express the pain and suffering of 50
men, women and children lost, and so many injured? What words
capture the anguish of our Muslim community being the target of
hatred and violence? What words express the grief of a city that
has already known so much pain?
I thought there were none. And then I came here and was
met with this simple greeting. As-salaam Alaikum. Peace be upon
you.
These were simple words, repeated by community leaders
who witnessed the loss of their friends and loved ones. Simple
words, whispered by the injured from their hospital beds. Simple
words, spoken by the bereaved and everyone I met who has been
affected by this attack.
As-salaam Alaikum. Peace be upon you.6
6

7. Relevancy and Consequential Information
• Audience analysis and adaptation is vital
• Cater the content to make it more relevant to your audience
• If your audience sees no reason to listen to you, they won’t
• Ask WIIFT: “What’s in it for them?”
• Give your audience an important reason to listen to you
7

8. Novelty
• Different is interesting
• An unusual change in the setting of the presentation can
captivate the audience
8

9. Emotions
• You should care about your purpose and audience and show your
feelings honestly
• This makes audience members more likely to listen, remember
your message, and grant you high credibility
• Showing your own feelings is one way to appeal to your audience’s
emotions
9

10. Vivid Descriptions
• Vivid descriptions make presentations more interesting
• For example, consider President Barack Obama’s 2020 eulogy for
John Lewis:
And we know what happened to the marchers that day. Their bones were cracked
by billy clubs. Their eyes and lungs choked with tear gas. They knelt to pray, which
made their heads easier targets. And John was struck in the skull. And he thought
he was going to die, surrounded by the sight of young Americans gagging and
bleeding and trampled.7
10

11. Use Humor
• Injecting humor into a presentation can capture and hold
audience attention and help listeners remember you and your
presentation
• Audience members tend to remember humorous speakers
positively, even when they are not enthusiastic about the
speaker’s message or topic
• The best humorous speakers know which type of humor to use in
a particular situation in front of a particular audience
• How to be humorous cannot be taught or learned without trying it
repeatedly in front of real audiences
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12. Deciding Whether to Use Humor
• Although humor can capture audience attention, it can also
distract from your message
• Humor can enhance your credibility, but it can have the opposite
effect if it’s inappropriate or offensive
• Thorough audience analysis makes it easier to decide the impact
of your humor on your listeners
• If you are not humorous, you may want to avoid using humor
until you learn to do it well
12

13. Self-Effacing Humor
• Self-effacing humor is your ability to direct humor at yourself
• It lowers the barrier between you and your audience by showing
them you are an ordinary, fallible human being
• Consider the following example of former president Ronald
Reagan:
There was a very prominent Democrat who reportedly told a large group,
“Don’t worry. I’ve seen Ronald Reagan, and he looks like a million.” He was
talking about my age.8
• Use self-effacing humor sparingly to make sure you don’t
diminish the audience’s impression of your competence and
weaken the power of your message 13

14. Inappropriate Humor
• Offensive humor insults your audience and damages your
credibility
• Apply the following guidelines to avoid offensive humor:
• Avoid insulting, explicit, or profane language.
• Don’t tease anyone in your audience (unless the occasion is a
roast).
• Steer clear of jokes about ethnicity, race, religion, gender
identity, sex, politics, or other sensitive issues.
• Stay focused on your purpose; don’t mistake your
presentation for a stand-up routine
• Irrelevant humor wastes the audience’s time and makes you
appear poorly prepared
14

15. Be Energetic and Expressive
• Expressiveness has a strong impact on audience interest
• Vary your rate, pitch, and volume to enhance your vocal inflection,
emphasize important words and phrases, and communicate
warmth, involvement, and confidence
• Establish and maintain direct eye contact
• Strive to establish immediacy with your audience in order to gain
and maintain their attention and interest while enhancing your
credibility
• Build verbal and nonverbal immediacy through physical
closeness, humor, inclusive personal pronouns, and openness to
the opinions of your audience
15

16. Employ Audience Participation
• Audiences pay more attention if they know that at some point
they may be asked to participate
• Get the audience involved early and often
• Note that there are rhetorical situations where audience
involvement is impossible or discouraged
16

17. Ask Questions
• One of the easiest ways to involve audience members is to ask for
their reactions to what you’ve said
• Conducting a poll combines involving listeners and doing a quick
form of audience analysis
• You can be creative in the way you poll your audience
17

18. Encourage Interaction
• Asking listeners to interact with one another can enhance
interest, recall, and learning
• Conducting a poll combines involving listeners and doing a quick
form of audience analysis
• Consider the following suggestions to effectively use breakout
rooms in online presentations:
• Ask one person in each breakout room to be the organizer
• Suggest specific topics that you want audience members to
discuss or activities you want them to perform while in the
breakout room.
• Assign a time limit
18

19. Involve Their Senses
• Employ sensory images in your presentation, and not just those
that involve sight and sound
• Using relevant sensory aids engages your audience and reinforces
your content
19

20. Conduct an Activity
• Simple games as well as complex training exercises can involve
audience members with your presentation and with one another
• Interrupting your presentation with a group exercise gives the
audience and you a break, during which they can interact in
different but meaningful ways
20

21. Ask for Volunteers
• Volunteers can help you demonstrate how to perform a skill or
how to use a piece of equipment
• Make sure your volunteers aren’t going to be embarrassed, and
find a way to reward them
21

22. Conclusion
• A well-prepared, audience-centered should not be dull or boring
• There are many speaking strategies you can use to generate and
maintain interest, boost your credibility, and improve listener
recall
• If you choose strategies that take into account all six elements of
the rhetorical situation, it will be difficult for audience members
to deny you their attention and interest.
22

23. Notable Speaker: Joe Smith, Part 1
Joe Smith is a semiretired lawyer and
environmentalist in Oregon. He took to the TED
stage in 2012 to teach people about one of his
personal passions: reducing paper waste by
using paper towels properly.
His talk has been viewed more than three
million times and has received coverage in a
wide array of online publications. It even
inspired one viewer, Cecelia Warner, to launch a
website, Shake & Fold, to spread the word.
In addition to his environmental advocacy
work, Smith has served in a variety of roles in
Oregon politics including as a district attorney
and executive assistant to the speaker of the
Oregon House of Representatives.

24. Notable Speaker: Joe Smith, Part 2
24

25. Notable Speaker: Joe Smith, Part 3
25

26. Notable Speaker: Joe Smith, Part 4
26

27. Credits
This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for Chapter 5.3.
For more resources, please visit The Norton Field Guide to Speaking:
http://digital.wwnorton.com/nfgspeaking.
Copyright © 2022 W. W. Norton & Company