One of my Toastmasters mentees recently asked me this question. This is the advice I gave her.
The simple (and probably non-helpful) answer is "anything." Don't make the mistake of trying to come up with speech topics out of whole cloth. I once read something that radically changed how I look at preparing for these speeches: you could do the same speech for all ten CC manual speeches, just tweaking it each time for whatever that assignment is emphasizing.
So, here's a list of ideas:
See a theme? (1) Speaking on things I know about. (2) Using essentially the same speech multiple times, tweaking it each time. I used that basic Star Trek material for four different speeches.
Obviously, each speech was different, but I only had to do the research once. Don't reinvent the wheel every speech. That's actually real-life, by the way: absolutely no speaker out there actually writes new speeches each time. You re-use lots of previous material, customizing it for the occasion and audience.
The simple (and probably non-helpful) answer is "anything." Don't make the mistake of trying to come up with speech topics out of whole cloth. I once read something that radically changed how I look at preparing for these speeches: you could do the same speech for all ten CC manual speeches, just tweaking it each time for whatever that assignment is emphasizing.
So, here's a list of ideas:
- Hobbies: what are you interested in that you think others might be? I have done four total manual speeches on different aspects of Star Trek (and discovered a few "closet Trekkies" in the process :-). I also did a speech combining public speaking skills and the Israeli martial art of Krav Maga, of which I am a practitioner.
- Interesting things you've read about: I did a model speech (also storytelling manual speech) on St Peter from the Bible, when he denied Jesus three times and Jesus later redeemed him. I also did a speech on how to learn a foreign language, which I used for two manual speeches (CC #8 and #9).
- Your job: what's cool, or interesting, or little-known, or encouraging, about your job or jobs you've had? I did a speech on APIs, which is a big part of my job.
- Messages you want to get out there: my CC#10 speech, which I also used as a contest speech and as several speeches from the Storytelling advanced manual, was on women's situational awareness for self-protection. It was actually not a very good contest speech, though I won a club level with it, but it was such an important message I wanted to get it out there.
See a theme? (1) Speaking on things I know about. (2) Using essentially the same speech multiple times, tweaking it each time. I used that basic Star Trek material for four different speeches.
Obviously, each speech was different, but I only had to do the research once. Don't reinvent the wheel every speech. That's actually real-life, by the way: absolutely no speaker out there actually writes new speeches each time. You re-use lots of previous material, customizing it for the occasion and audience.