CONSTRUCTING A PLAN.
The thoughts which have been gathered in the modes pointed out in the
last chapter are now to be arranged in the most effective order. It will
not usually do to begin a speech with those things we happen to first
think of, and proceed to others that are less obvious. This would lead
to an anti-climax fatal to eloquence. A speaker who adopted this mode
once complained that his speeches often seemed to taper to a very fine
point, and that he lost all interest in them before finishing. The
explanation was simple; he uttered first those thoughts which were
familiar to himself and came afterward to those which had been sought
out by more or less painful effort, and which seemed less certain and
valuable. The remedy for this fault is found in careful arrangement. The
most familiar thoughts will naturally be jotted down first, but it does
not follow that they should occupy the same place in the finished plan
of the speech.
The true mode of improving your plans is to bestow a great deal of time
and thought upon them, and to make no disposition of any part for which
you cannot give a satisfactory reason. This direction relates only to
the beginner. In time the formation of plans will become so natural that
any variation from the most effective arrangement will be felt as keenly
as a discord in music is felt by a master in that art. From such
carefully constructed plans, firm, coherent, and logical discourses will
result.
There are certain general characteristics that each plan should possess.
It must fully indicate the nature of the proposed discourse and mark out
each of its successive steps with accuracy. Any want of definiteness in
the outline is a fatal defect. You must feel that you can rely
absolutely on it for guidance to the end of your discourse or be always
in danger of embarrassment and confusion.
Each clause should express a distinct idea, and but one. This should be
repeated in no other part of the discourse; otherwise, we fall into
wearisome repetitions, the great vice, as it is often claimed, of
extempore speakers.
A brief plan is better, other things being equal, than a long one. Often
a single word will recall an idea as perfectly as many sentences, and it
will burden the memory less. We do not expect the draft of a house to
equal the house in size, but only to preserve a proportionate relation
to it throughout. The plan cannot supply the thought, but, indicating
what is in the mind, it shows how to bring it forth in regular
succession. It is a pathway leading to a definite end, and, like all
pathways, its crowning merits are directness and smoothness. Without
these qualities it will perplex and hinder rather than aid. Each word in
the plan should suggest an idea, and be so firmly bound to that idea
that the two cannot become separated in any exigency of speech. You will
find it sorely perplexing if, in the heat of discourse, some important
note should lose the thought for which it previously stood and become an
empty word. But with clear conceptions condensed into fitting words this
cannot easily happen. A familiar idea can be expressed very briefly,
while a strange or new conception may require more expansion. But all
thoughts advanced by the speaker ought to be familiar to himself as the
result of long meditation and thorough mastery, no matter how strange or
startling they are to his hearers. Most skeletons may be brought within
the compass of a hundred words, and every part be clearly indicated to
the mind that conceived it, though perhaps not to any other.
There may be occasions when a speaker is justified in announcing his
divisions and subdivisions, but such cases are exceptions. Hearers do
not care how a discourse is constructed, so it comes to them warm and
pulsating with life. To give the plan of a speech before the speech
itself is contrary to the order of nature. We are not required first to
look upon a grisly skeleton before we can see a graceful, living body.
There is a skeleton inside each body, but during life it is well hidden,
and there is no reason that the speaker should anticipate the work of
the tomb. It is hardly less objectionable to name the parts of the
discourse during the progress of the discussion, for—continuing the
former illustration—bones that project through the skin are very
unlovely. The only case, I presume to think, where it is justifiable to
name the parts of a discourse, either before or during its delivery, is
where the separate parts have an importance of their own, in addition to
their office of contributing to the general object. Much of the
proverbial “dryness” of sermons arises from the preacher telling what he
is _about_ to remark, _firstly_, before he actually makes the remark
thus numbered. Whenever we hear a minister read his text, announce his
theme, state the parts into which he means to divide it, and then warn
us that the first head will be subdivided into a certain number of
parts, each of which is also specified in advance, we prepare our
endurance for a severe test.