Dale Carnegie on speaking

"If we are going to talk to a small group, we should choose a small room. Better to pack the aisles of a small place than to have people scattered through the lonely, deadening spaces of a large hall.

If your hearers are scattered, ask them to move down front and be seated near you. Insist on this before you start speaking.

Unless the audience is a fairly large one, and there is a real reason, a necessity, for the speaker to stand on a platform, don't do so. Get down on the same level with them. Stand near them. Break up all formality. Get an intimate contact. Make the thing conversational."

My writer friends... Carnegie's advice works. And I suggest we should think of and treat our readers this way: get an intimate contact, make things conversational, create a bond of familiarity. How else can we expect them to suspend their disbelief?


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