Developing content: how to organize and prioritize ideas

The Central Objective: Directing the Audience's Attention

Once you have captured interest with a good opening, you enter the development phase, the central part of your speech.

The sole and fundamental objective of this phase is to direct and maintain the attention of your audience to the main idea you want to convey.

To achieve this, it is not enough to present information; it is crucial that it is organized in a way that is logical, coherent and easy to follow.

A good structure not only makes your speech more understandable, but also projects an image of rigor and good preparation, which increases your credibility.

The Hierarchy of Ideas: A Pyramid Structure

To organize your content effectively, it is very useful to think of a four-level hierarchical structure:

The Central Idea: This is the most concise summary of your speech, the essence of your message encapsulated in a single sentence. For example: "My speech is about this".

The Main Ideas: This is a development of the central idea, usually between 4 and 6 key points that support your main message.

The Supporting (or Secondary) Ideas: Support each of your main ideas through examples, explanations, statistics, quotes or specific arguments.

Transition Ideas: These are the connectors or links you use to move from one idea to another in a fluid way, giving your speech a logical and compact order.

Phrases such as "Having said this...", "Another important aspect is..." or "Why I say this..." serve to guide the audience through your reasoning.

This pyramidal structure, from the most general idea to the supporting details, makes it much easier for the audience to follow your storyline and retain key information.

Organizational Models for Structuring Your Speech

There is no single way to organize your ideas; the structure you choose will depend on the topic, the audience and the style with which you are most comfortable. Some of the most effective models are:

Chronological Structure: Describes events in the order in which they occurred, ideal for telling a story or explaining a historical process.

Problem-Solution Structure: A problem is presented, its causes are analyzed and, finally, one or several solutions are proposed. It is very effective for persuasive speeches.

Thematic Structure (or "The Whole and its Parts"): A main message is presented and then broken down into different themes or individual blocks that are discussed separately.

Deductive: The inductive structure starts from specific examples or data to reach a general conclusion (the thesis) at the end.

Deductive, on the other hand, presents the thesis at the beginning and then breaks it down into smaller ideas that prove it.

Other approaches may be based on order of importance, compare and contrast, or cause and effect.

Speaker Comfort: A Decisive Factor

Although certain topics may lend themselves better to one structure than another, it is critical that you choose an organizational model that you are comfortable a