1. People remember what they “see” in their minds. Keep that in your mind as you craft your opening. Craft your setup and followup with your punch line.
2. Begin with a Strong Opening with a theme that would resonate through the speech from the beginning to the end. – The scarlet ribbon effect.
3. Make the opening your Premise or theme of the speech – make it the foundation on which the speech is built.
4. Check your I to You- Ratio – Try to find a balance between the use of I and you.
5. We have experiences in our every day that are stories waiting to be told. In your everyday human experiences, you will find some of your best stories. Use them.
6. Use humor in your speech to make a point. Make a point, tell a story or tell a story to make a point. If the point can make your audience laugh, then you made your point.
7. Use follow-up lines (tagging) to provoke additional laughter or if laughter doesn’t follow what you thought maybe a funny line, tag it.
8. The punch-line is simply changing the expectations of your audience. Take your audience in an unexpected direction.
9. Don’t confuse your audience. A confused mind does not laugh. D. LaCroix.
10. Observe ordinary facets of life. With the right amount of observations, it can become your humor gold mine. Keep and maintain your own story file
USE SPEECH BRIGHTENERS TO CREATE HUMOR
A Speech Brightener is a passing humorous reference or an extraneous observation woven into the main body of a speech or remark in such a way that it doesn’t interrupt the continuity of thought. A speech brightener differs from a joke in many respects. A speech brightener goes with the flow of the speech to emphasize the point the speaker is seeking to make. If the speaker says in his or her opinion something is foolish, they might add that it is as foolish as ……. and select a suitable analogy to emphasize his or her point that would introduce some welcome humor into the remarks. Usually, a speech brightener is fast and would normally catch your audience by surprise. It is a well know fact that surprise is one of the most important elements of humor. Here are a few examples:
I am the kind of person or He is the kind of person or She is the kind of person
Who is often called a cynic – I think other people are as bad as I am.
Who may not always be right – but I am never wrong.
Who believes nothing is impossible – if I don’t have to do it myself.
Develop your own speech brighteners. Use them especially in “table topics”. Your audience may see you as a kind of person who has more than meets the IQ.
COMPARISONS also make excellent speech brighteners: Here are some more starters: As BAD As – As GOOD As – As CONVINCING As – As FOOLISH As.….
Speaking For All Occasions 
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