That’s useful. If you don’t like the method per se, go find a local magic shop and learn a few simple close up effects from a magician. Have them teach you and/or just watch their handling of the audience. They are masters of keeping people focused right where they want them to be looking. And they don’t need an object to do it. In fact from what I’ve seen/heard, the best speakers are speakers secondarily. They are first, magicians or comics or something of that nature which talents they use to draw people into and focus people on the presentation.

Enjoy.

Hmm, I’ve not caught up on that aspect of the publishing industry; although I’m not surrpised, given how romance really took off as a separate genre (and sadly, the church is prone to adapting pagan cultural aspects and then Christianizing them, rather than really reforming. Its possible to have a good romance that is acceptable, its just really really really rare).

Preparation time is good to know. Its public speaking, and the professor seems to prefer what I call the Gar Smalley method; using an object to hold your listener’s attention. I plan to do everything he says, and then decide what I’ll keep for future use on my own time (I’m not a fan of the object method. Its helpful for a short talk, or if you only have one point to make. But to introduce multiple objects gets confusing, and I forget what everything is supposed to mean. Unless there is a system for remembering the objects that are supposed to help you remember the points…..). I’m just praying its not too painful; is there a difference between general and public speaking?

That’s actually a problem for most traditional Christian novelists. I think it comes from the fact that the early Christian fiction industry was romance fiction. Double Blech. So, more talented writers in non-romance genres tended to write to similar depth. In comparison, consider Kevin J Anderson’s Saga of Seven Suns or his Captain Nemo (reviewed here), you will find an author who has lots of words, but lots of plot and plenty of character development.

But yeah, from my experience in speaking, I have found that minor preparation has me speaking for at least 30 minutes. Additional preparation will extended that longer before shortening it again. Its an interesting scale and not set in stone. It depends on your previous knowledge level of the subject, but is still generally true.

Enjoy your class. What’s the subject matter exactly? Interpretative? General speaking? Acting? Poetry? Public speaking?

But, if you want to speak with any depth and logic for a short time, you must have thought through and thoroughly researched your material. It is very hard, nay impossible, to speak concisely without much difficult work.

Why would writing be any different? I don’t see much difference between children’s work and adult fare in this regard. An author can meander around and wander aimlessly in the plot (e.g. The Goblet of Fire; good plot, wanders around and takes forever to reach the point). Now, being concise can go to far. Consider Dekker’s Black, Red, White trilogy. Excellent books (really, a must read), but Dekker seems to publish outlines of his books and they are never quite fleshed out. It is as if Dekker has so much to write and so many ideas that he just dumps them on the page, makes them publishable (and they are good reads), but never fills them out.

So, one can err on both sides. But, concise is better than overly wordy (think Washington Irving…).

One thing I found interesting was the author’s emphasis on being concise. Its helpful to remember, but at the same time, can be deteremental (most exams, for example, grade you mostly on how much you write). Its interesting especailly because this is White’s only work for adults (to my knowledge). A kids book requires concision. Does an adult book benefit from being extremely concise, or not? Any thoughts?