Ditch the script

In general, TED talks piss me off. It's true, some of them are fantastic, but... at this point their format has become what most people think of as the 'gold standard' of public speaking, and that format (18 minutes of tightly scripted monologue from a person who is imprisoned in a red circle) is frankly anathema to what real speaking should be like.

Here's what I reckon: scripts suck!

Scripts are absolutely terrible because they (falsely) convince our brain there is a correct group of things that have to be said in this presentation, and that there's a correct order that they need to be said.

Here’s just one example of a script completely killing a man’s ability to speak:

To be fair, he starts out well, and he spends the first minute or so delivering quite a good joke. From that point on, however, we lose the real speaker, and he is replaced with a robotic version of himself that looks and sounds exactly like a man reading a script off a monitor... which is, of course, exactly what he's doing.

As I watch that presentation, I think to myself "I wonder what he would've said without the script to distract him? I wonder who he could've been, energetically, in that moment, without a plan to interrupt the power of serendipity?"

He gives the impression that the 'real him' would be an interesting, insightful, and funny individual. Unfortunately the version of him on stage is dull, uninteresting, and lifeless.

I wonder who he could’ve been, energetically, in that moment, without a rigid script interrupting the power of serendipity?

(The truly excellent speakers, mind you, are allowed to ignore the rules TED apply to everyone else. Benjamin Xander delivered one of the all-time great TED talks without a script on a monitor, and from WAAAAAY outside the boundaries of the red circle. This is real speaking: