As he began to speak the room was hushed. Silence lay like layers of dust on a long-forgotten tomb — pretty quiet, huh! Those words are from a novel by writer, Auberon Waugh. When I first read that line I stopped, went back, and read it again. It was the most exquisitely descriptive image of silence I had ever read. An honour I had previously reserved for Gordon Lightfoot’s forests too silent to be real. Both writers could have said, it was silent as a grave, so quiet you could have heard a pin drop, or quiet as a mouse. None of which would have made a best-selling novel or popular song.
Those expressions are cliches, trite, overused, everyday expressions. There is a problem with using cliches in a speech. As I'm sure you've aware, only 7% of a speech's impact reaches the audience through language. This is partly because many words are repetitious, and since we speed listen, we don't register the ones we have heard before. We block them out. If there are too many cliches, then a whole sentence may be ignored. This leaves gaps where the audience may stop listening, it gives them the opportunity to tune out. Don't let them! Words should flow like sun warmed honey. Cliches interrupt that flow. It then takes something special to bring them back.
How do you do that? By making your words more descriptive, painting pictures the audience can climb into. These pictures should be vivid but simple; remember, the spoken word, unlike the written, cannot be reread. Your listener should be able to see, hear, taste, smell, and even feel the images that you portray.
The way to do this is using descriptive language, to make use of simile or metaphor. These structures are all linked. The example I used at the beginning of this presentation — silence lay like layers of dust on a long-forgotten tomb is a simile, it uses imagery which intensely describes silence by saying it is like something else, a direct comparison. Silence lay like layers of dust; this picture is then compounded by describing the layers of dust — on a long-forgotten tomb. How much more silent can you get than that? Can't you just visualize it.
Imagine you've entered a mausoleum, it's cold and dank, the door slams shut behind you with an aggressive thud. There's just one beam of light, it pierces the room like a shard of glass. Focusing on the tomb like an expectant spotlight waiting for the star of the show. The silence whispers your name, then, the lid on the tomb raises slowly, a stench corrupts the air of the crypt. The air around you rushes by, pulling you, forcing you forward to the open casket. Words drowning in viscous gurgling nightmares that manage to escape and reach your ears. Sorry I got a little carried away. That was a little exaggerated, but you get the idea. It's amazing what you can do with a simple thesaurus.
Here's another simile describing how angry someone is — he was like a pit-bull with a migraine. How much angrier can a person get? Of course, the trick is they’re ones that work, for example — he was like a dog with a headache??? Doesn't quite make it, neither does bear with a sore head. That one is worn out.
Metaphor is like a simile but omits the words "like", or "as" for example: after a snowfall, silence lies on roof and road. Silence is a metaphor for snow. Like similes, metaphors link things which are dissimilar. Life again climbs above the horizon. Life being a metaphor for the sun. Beware too of mixing metaphors... They took the wind out of his sails, and he ended up with egg on his face. You see, good similes and metaphors don't come easily, it's like pulling teeth! Oh no! cliche alert! What can we use to describe something that is difficult, something fresh. Any suggestions? How about It's like getting a kitten off a blanket; or It's like getting a three-year-old into a snow suit. Anything but a cliche!
By using similes, and metaphor you can make your speeches much more vivid, more picturesque, and more interesting. You can make your words breathe life into a speech you may otherwise have died with.
I'm going to end with a few more examples of imagery. For instance, life for many is just a cruise down the highway, (metaphor) but lately I feel as though I'm on a dirt road driving a beat up old Volkswagen and It's beginning to rain, and the windshield wipers don't work, and I really should have put some more air in that front tire, and what’s that funny noise from the engine, and oh no! Are those flashing blue lights in the rear-view mirror? We stop, he gets out and walks towards me. He's built like a Klingon with an attitude to match. (simile) His icy stare freezes me in my seat. (metaphor) He says, "Where's the fire buddy" (Cliche!). Goodbye Have a nice day!!! (Whoops)
As he leaves the lectern, the applause begins with a few tentative motions, then erupts into a beastlike roar of assertion, before subsiding into the silence that had greeted him. The silence of one hand clapping. It was so silent you could hear a dream breaking. It was so silent you could hear Casper's heartbeat. It was so silent You could . . .