Convention speakers?

I've spoken to small groups, like Probus clubs - about 80 victims. I'm lucky, though. My book's an historical fantesy and I can tell of my superstitious Manx family believing in magic creatures like the Phennodderee, the Bugain and the Foer. Then there's the fact that I was brought up on the site of an ancient castle - well, actually on the midden outside the castle walls, so I was brought up on an old rubbish tip.

I tell how I got my ideas, how I took a couple of courses to make sure years in the public service hadn't crushed my writing style and then a brief idea of what the book is about - and that I have plenty of copies to sell after the meeting is over.

I then talk about the difficulties of getting published, of vanity publishers versus partnership publishers versus the mainstream publishers.

I try to make it amusing - God knows there's little to smile about sometimes, trying to get published, but even that can be made into a joke.

And last but not least, enjoy the experience.

I speak to lots of school groups. The thing to keep in mind is, They are not out to get you. They are favorably disposed toward you. Otherwise, they would not have invited you, right?

So I just get up there and tell stories and answer questions and before you know it, an hour has passed.

I'm presenting two workshops at the Northern Colorado Writer's Conference in April, and I can say so long as you have a plan, you won't have much to worry about. Even get together a basic outline, but be flexible to deal with questions and other issues the audience may bring up that you hadn't initially considered. Mine is a blend of lecture/workshop presentation, and one key is to have handouts -- whether it's a basic outline of what you want to say or additional resources they can follow up on, at least they'll be able to take something away from the experience.

Also, be sure to have business cards handy - you never know what opportunities for networking and additional work might arise!

You'll do great; don't worry!

I agree with John, the first thing to remember is this isn't an audition. Your audience is already predisposed to like you, and they want to hear from you.

What I did (when I was invited to talk for WCDR and got to meet the fab Mr. KTC) was first start off talking a bit about my road to publication, as I was talking to other authors and I knew they would be interested, and then I tried to introduce a few new ideas that maybe they hadn't thought of. I explained why I liked Children's literature so much, discussed the importance of humour in books in general.

The reason why I said what I said was because they had invited me to speak to authors about writing for kids. They don't get a lot of kid's book authors, so I wanted to share some ideas that were unique to the genre.

Now you say that everyone is talking about home school stuff. I'm not really sure what that means to be honest, but I am sure that could be a place to start. And what is the nature of the convention, what is it, and who will be attending? Ask yourself why you were invited (and don't go all modest and say "I don't know! I'm just little ol' me!". The biggest thing I've learned is that it is unfair to get so modest when people have gone out of their way to express an interest in having you speak. It's disrespectful in my mind. Though yes it is difficult to wrap your head around the idea of others wanting to hear from you). So, why do you think they wanted you specifically to come? And you know what, you could even ask them that question, and what they would be interested in hearing you talk about. I've been on several panels now, and have spoken several times to schools etc (only once to that group of grown ups though, and it was so cool), and every single time I have asked the person who invited me, what sort of thing they think their audience would want to hear.

You can so do it! And I know it's a bit cheeky to do this, but as I am also an actress, have been a teacher and know a fair bit about public speaking, so I wrote a 4 part series on Speaking Aloud on my blog several months back. If you want to check it out, please visit this link, and then just click on "newer post" to get to each subsequent posting. It's more to do with reading aloud from one's book, but there is some general advice in there about presentation technique, specifically here. Only if you are interested of course.

Tell them what you are going to tell them then tell them and finish up by telling them what you told them. This is a standard speaker's formula assuming you know what you are going to tell them to begin with. The odds are you do know otherwise you would not have been asked to speak.

ishtar'sgate said:

Have any of you ever had to speak at a convention? I've been asked to speak at the BC Home School Convention and I almost threw up when I read the email. It got worse when I checked out who else would be speaking. So far the other speakers are talking on home school related topics. If any of you have had to give talks on writing - HELP! What should I include? They may want a kind of workshop although they haven't been too specific. They're not quite sure what to do with me.
Linnea

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I've spoken at educational conventions before, back in my teaching days. If this is a home school convention, you might try to get an idea of what it is they want you to talk about--is it about how to teach children to write, for example? If so, it helps to introduce a lot of practical, usable methods in your talk. (Educators like hands-on stuff.)