Humorous Speech Topics

Humorous speech topics to save you time and worry when you have to deliver funny speeches.

Humans love to laugh but a sad thing about the fear of public speaking is that far too many people think they can't be funny when they speak.

Not true.

Anyone can learn to use humor. First though it helps to understand a couple of things.

You Don't Have To Be A Stand-Up Comedian

This will come as a huge relief to most of you!

Comedians pretty much have to keep the audience laughing continuously. You don't.

You can deliver a really humorous speech of say 6 minutes by making them laugh in the first 30 seconds, closing with a funny story and getting a few laughs in the body of the talk.

There Is A Ton Of Material Out There

Really you'll never run out of humorous public speaking topics as long as you can think.

The supply of potential topics is effectively infinite even if you only use two sources:

• Your memory
• The Internet

Here's One Expert's Ideas

Melvin Helitzer in his book Comedy Writing Secrets lays out six elements of humor that can be used to come up with humorous speech topics:

1. Target
   Pick a person, a place, an idea or an object that you'll ridicule. Could be you.
2. Hostility
   Make fun of the Target.
3. Realism
   Most funny stories are based on truth. "I've always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying - 'Ain't that the truth.'" ~Quincy Jones
4. Exaggeration
   Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.
5. Emotion
   Don't be boring. Make the story come alive with your voice, your enthusiasm, your body, your slides or any other props.
6. Surprise
   Humor must be unexpected.

Point number 1 above is really all you need to come up with all the funny speech topics you'll ever need isn't it?

Finally Some Words Of The Wise

"Don't take yourself too seriously. And don't be too serious about not taking yourself too seriously." Howard Ogden "The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded." George Orwell "Laughter is the shortest distance between two people." Victor Borge

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