Impromptu Speaking: How to Think on Your Feet Like a Roman Orator

Prepared speeches are rare. Impromptu speaking happens every day: the meeting where your boss turns and asks for your view, the dinner where someone says “Say a few words,” the interview question you did not see coming, the moment at a town hall when you must stand and answer. For most men, these unplanned moments are where reputations are actually made.

The ancient orators treated speaking without preparation as the crown of their art. The Roman teacher Quintilian, near the end of his great work on the education of the orator, describes the power to speak extempore as the richest fruit of all the orator’s study. And they knew that it is not a gift. It is the product of a well-stocked mind and a few reliable habits. Here is how to build both.

The secret: impromptu is never truly unprepared

When a great speaker answers a hard question brilliantly on the spot, he is not inventing from nothing. He is drawing on years of reading, thinking and practice. Cicero insisted in On the Orator that the ideal orator must have a broad knowledge of history, law and philosophy, because a man cannot speak well on a subject he does not understand. The words come easily to a man who has something to say.

Rem tene, verba sequentur. (Grasp the matter; the words will follow.)

Attributed to Cato the Elder

So the first rule of impromptu speaking is to prepare in general, so that you never have to prepare in particular. Read widely. Read history and biography especially; our Men’s Book Club works through Plutarch’s Lives for exactly this reason. Every story you know is a story you can tell when called on.

Stock the storehouse: commonplaces

The ancient rhetoricians kept what they called commonplaces (in Greek topoi, in Latin loci communes): ready-made lines of argument, examples and themes that could be adapted to almost any subject. Renaissance students kept commonplace books, notebooks of quotations and examples sorted by topic, so that material was always at hand. Erasmus wrote a famous textbook, De Copia, on building exactly this kind of abundance of things to say.

Build your own. Keep a notebook or a file with headings such as courage, leadership, failure, friendship, fatherhood, duty and change. Under each, write down stories, quotations and historical examples as you meet them. Review it often. When you are called on, you will find that you already have something to reach for.

Use a frame: never speak without a structure

The fastest way to sound composed is to drop your thoughts into a structure you have practiced so often that it is automatic. These are compressed versions of the classical order we lay out in how to structure a speech. Learn three and you will have one for nearly every occasion.

Frame 1: Point, Reason, Example, Point

State your answer in one sentence. Give the main reason. Offer one example or story. Restate your answer. This is the classical proof reduced to its bones, and it works for almost any question in a meeting.

Frame 2: Past, Present, Future

Where we were, where we are, where we should go. This is ideal for toasts, tributes and updates, and it is the hidden shape of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Frame 3: Problem, Cause, Solution

Name the problem, explain why it exists, propose what to do. This suits any discussion where a decision must be made.

Buy yourself time, gracefully

You have more time than you think. A pause of two or three seconds before answering looks thoughtful, not lost. Use it to choose a frame and your first sentence. If you need a few more seconds, restate the question aloud (“The question is whether we should expand this spring”), which clarifies the issue for everyone and gives your mind a moment to organize.

Start strong, end on purpose

Your first sentence should be your answer, not a warm-up. “I think we should wait, for one reason” is far stronger than “Well, that’s a great question, and there are a lot of ways to look at it.” And when you have made your point, end. The most common impromptu mistake is circling, repeating the same idea in new words while searching for a way out. Decide on your closing line early and deliver it with a full stop.

Practice: the only real cure

Impromptu skill grows only with repetition. Some drills to begin today:

• The one-minute topic. Have a friend or family member give you a random topic. Speak for exactly sixty seconds using one of the frames above.
• The news drill. Read a headline and give a ninety-second opinion on it, out loud, in the car.
• The dinner question. At the table, pose a question from history or ethics and let each person answer in a minute. Sons learn this quickly.
• Record and review. Listen back for filler words and for whether your first sentence was really your answer.

Practice it with the Orators Club

In the planned format of the Orators Club, Meriwether Academy’s public speaking club for men in Nashville, every member is called on to speak without preparation on a question drawn from history, philosophy or the news, and then receives specific critique from the brothers in the room. It is the ancient exercise of the forum, revived for the modern man. If even the thought of that makes your pulse jump, start with how to overcome the fear of public speaking, and train your instrument with voice exercises for public speaking.

The men who spoke well on their feet in the Roman Senate and the Continental Congress were not improvising from nothing. They were drawing on everything they had read, thought and practiced. Fill the storehouse, learn the frames, and the next time someone turns to you and asks what you think, you will be ready.