How To Structure a TEDx script
By Bilyana Georgieva, TEDx Coach, Digital Nerd and Multi-Award Winning Professional Speaker, founder of The ‘Red Dot Speaker Star’ (formerly ‘Soon-To-Be a TEDx Speaker’) Program.
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Kudos to Silvana Cory-Wright for asking me
“How To Structure a TEDx script?”
So today I can give you one of my favourite formulas for structuring a TEDx speech -
My Supreme Script Explosion Formula , that is part of module two of the ‘Red Dot Speaker Star’ system:
- Start your talk with an opening sentence;
- Followed by a story which makes the audience connect with you and see themselves in your story;
- Embed at the end your story Nr 1 a memorable Key Phrase. Fairy tales finish with “The moral of the story is …” You should finish this part with your TEDx with your wisdom, i.e. the biggest take away for your audience;
- Transitioning sentence to ‘present’ your next story (2);
- Story Nr 2;
- Followed by the same memorable Key Phrase to ‘seal’ that phrase in people’s mind;
- (if time) Transitioning sentence to ‘present’ story 3;
- Story Nr 3;
- Closing sentence that includes your Key Phrase again
You may are now thinking:
“But Bilyana, that’s insane! Every TEDx speaker put their wisdom at the end of their talk, not right after the first story or repeating it after each story!”
Yep, most of them do that! and they lose 60% of their audience!
Since 2019–2020 people start expecting to hear a WOW! wisdom in the first 2–3 minutes of a talk or a video they watch. If there is no such take away for them they click away or, if they are in the room with you, they start thinking about their day-to-day tasks, judge the person sitting next to them, or thinking about their past and … you lost them!
I also said “most of them” as there are TEDx speakers that followed the structure I’m giving you here and as a result their talk turned into a very memorable one, i.e. people remembered the Key Phrase that was repeated several times.
I’m actually not giving you something new here. I borrowed that idea from Neuroscience, where it’s called The Law Of Repetition — neurons connect to each other when they hear the same information several times. The more they hear it the more the connection between the neurons grow which leads to that information being stored in the long term memory of the brain.
As I’ve been watching and analysing many TEDx talks and public speeches I found out that the most memorable TEDx talks use the Law of Repetition in their structure.
Here are some examples:
Simon Sinek used that structure in his “How great leaders inspire action” and a Key Phrase “People don’t buy what you do, people buy WHY you do it”
Guess what? Everyone calls that TEDx talk “The Why” because they remember the Key Phrase but they don’t remember the title. After all he repeated it 7 times in an 18 min talk.
Alina Timofeeva used the Law of Repetition and same structure in her “Fail But Never Give Up” and a Key Phrase “Failure is an opportunity to grow”
Dr Khurram Sadiq had it in his third TEDx talk “The Superhumans That Exist Amongst Us” with a Key Phrase “It’s not about knowing Autism, it’s about understanding Autism” and in his fourth TEDx talk “When A Video Game Becomes An Addiction” with a Key Phrase “Keep the fantasy and reality in balance”
Jessy Gomes had it in her “Your Job Does Not Define Your Worth” and a Key Phrase that is same as the title of her talk
Maria Guimaraez used that structure in her TEDx talk “You Should Not Exist” with a Key Phrase “Suffering is the struggle that make us mentally strong”
Magdalene Adenaike had it in her “Why we must all be leaders?” with a Key Phrase “Real leaders embrace the superpowers of others”
I think I’ll stop here. You got my point 🙂
Of course there are variations of my Supreme Script Explosion Formula for TEDx:
- One story only — opening sentence, transition to your story, key phrase throughout the story, closing sentence
- Two stories — opening sentence, transition to your story, Story 1, key phrase, transition to story 2, Story 2, key phrase, closing sentence
- Three stories — opening sentence, transition to your story, Story 1, key phrase, transition to story 2, Story 2, key phrase, transition to story 3, Story 3, key phrase, closing sentence
- Many short stories like Simon Sinek’s talk, using the full length of an 18 min TEDx talk. You wont have time to dive deep into each story so you need to craft the most important and relevant to your topic part of each story you want to tell
As I gave you the structure of a TEDx script you may also want to read The 7 Easy Steps to Write a TEDx talk Majority of the people do it for soo LOOOOOOONG or make common mistakes that jeopardise their TEDx success later on. In this article I gave you the shortcuts on writing a TEDx talk.
Put in the comment below which step of the TEDx journey you are on at the moment? What do you need to know to progress quickly and move to the next phase? I’ll add it in my next articles.
Shout out again to Silvana Cory-Wright who inspired this week’s editorial.
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Sending you love and energy!
Yours,
Bilyana
#bizbily #publicspeaking #winnersmindset
