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- š¤ Say goodbye to monotony with this surprisingly simple hack.
š¤ Say goodbye to monotony with this surprisingly simple hack.
And no, you won't need a voice coach.
We often associate monotony with a lack of intonation and inflection in our voice. Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about his struggles with monotony in his latest Netflix documentary (highly recommend). Increasing your vocal range requires a lot of hard work, but this tip is instantly implementableā¦
Vary your sentence length.
I have been applying this principle for several years now after stumbling across this quote from Gary Provost:
SO jealous I didnāt come up with that š¤¢!
Now you understand the principle, letās take a look at some specific things you can do to apply this to your presentations:
Use longer sentences when telling a story š.
They help us to build momentum when we tell a story. Long sentences allow us to set the scene, share intricate details to make our stories more vivid and most importantly of all, create the suspense needed to draw our audience in.
Use mid-sentence pauses to create cliffhangers š±ā¦
When we present, we donāt need to wait until the end of a sentence to take a pause. Pauses are our punctuation! A mid-sentence pause can disrupt our audienceās rhythm, help us to come across more naturally (as we do this all the time in normal conversation) and keep our audienceās attention.
This is a technique that Jamie Foxx uses all the timeā¦
That pause lasted 6 seconds!
Notice how he uses his hand to signal that heās not finished speaking? Thatās how he ensures that heās not going to get cut off āļø.
Increase your pause length for shorter sentences š§Ø.
Short sentences are often the most powerful. So contrasting them with slightly longer pauses gives the sentence more weight.
Notice how bunching some shorter sentences together completely changes the rhythm of the story and keeps us all hooked as a result.
Jamie Foxxās story is the living embodiment of Gary Provostās quote!
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Alex
Whenever you're ready, here are some ways I can help:
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