A lot of us learned this format in high school English class: your introduction lays out your theme and the three points you want to make to support the theme, then you explain each point, then you wrap it up with a summary.
Perhaps because we learned this in Ms. Williamson’s class in 11th grade, it might feel like, as adults, we should be doing something more sophisticated. The old essay form is kinda, y’know, basic.
But hear me out. One thing your talk needs is structure, and we know that audiences can’t really hold a lot of information in their minds at once. Three points are a good amount, and the classic three-part essay is easy for the speaker to remember and the audience to grasp.
This structure also has the benefit of being familiar to most people, and easily understood even if you haven’t come across it before. There is comfort in being told, “Here’s what I’m going to talk about, and here’s how I’m going to do it.” It’s like being given a little map of the talk, and most audiences want that.
Once you’ve decided that you’re going to use this format for your talk, really commit to it. In your introduction, tell us what your three points are going to be. Then, each time you get to one of your three points, use the same language to refer to it. Repetition is your friend.
For example, let’s say you’re doing a talk about why summer is the best season: vacations, warm weather, and farmers’ markets. When you kick off your first point, don’t get fancy and talk about “taking time off.” Say “vacations.” This may seem obvious (don’t we all know that vacations mean taking time off?), but you have primed us to listen for three specific things in your introduction, so repeat the same language all the way through.
When you get to your second point, warm weather, you can call back to the first point to make sure we remember. “It’s clear why vacations are one of the best things about summer, so now let’s look at the next item on our list: warm weather.” And so on, as you get to the third point, farmers’ markets.
Think about writing your talk like optimizing your content for a search engine. The listener’s brain has bots that are swarming all over your content, trying to fit it together and understand how it’s important for them. The more you connect the dots on your end, the less work those bots have to do. By the time you get to the end of your talk, every person in there should be able to repeat back what the three points are.
This is certainly not the only way to construct a meaningful and memorable talk, but whatever form you choose, remember that your audience’s comprehension is paramount.
