Be Your Own Best Editor

Five tips to trim and refine a keynote talk or remarks.

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Do you have one of those friends or colleagues who tell stories that could take three minutes to share, but usually end up taking thirty? Maybe you are that person?

“I tend to go on too long.”

After years of editing and refining hundreds of talks for conferences like TED and many others, we hear this again (and again and again) from speakers we’re working with. This is completely natural — and also wonderful! Some of us are so passionate about our issue or story that we they want to share everything. But when it comes to writing and/or speaking to broader audiences, sharing too much content will overwhelm, confuse, and ultimately lose your audience.

If you want to write or speak in a way that is more clear and concise, but struggle with oversharing or writing extra long talks, there’s good news: Having too much content is better than too little. Why? Because just a bit of editing can make a good talk exceptional. In fact, we feel so strongly about this that we created a course about it in our Academy with collaborator/media maven Katrina Conanan-Riel.

Here are five tips to consider when editing your next public remarks: