Five ways to structure a talk, and how to know which one you need
Nobody is short of things to say. They are short of a shape to put them in. Five structures, what each one is for, and the twenty seconds it takes to pick.
The short answer
Almost nobody who struggles with a talk is short of things to say. They are short of a shape to put them in. Five structures cover nearly everything a working professional is asked to speak at: TED-style, hero’s journey, problem-agitate-solution, numbered framework, and testimony. You choose by asking what the room has to do when you sit down. Remember something, believe you, decide something, understand something, or trust you.
That choice takes about twenty seconds once you know the five. Getting it wrong costs you the talk, no matter how well you deliver it.
Why the blank page is the real problem
I record every client in the first session. When someone tells me they are bad at public speaking, the recording almost never shows what they think it shows. Their voice is fine. What is missing is a spine.
They arrive somewhere. They circle. They mention three things that are each individually true. Somebody checks their phone. Then they end, usually on an apology or a trailing “so, yeah”, because they have run out of material rather than arrived anywhere.
This is not a confidence problem and it is not a delivery problem. It is a structural one, and structural problems are the good kind, because they are fixable on paper, before you open your mouth, in an afternoon.
I have written at length about the other half of this, the four dials of power, pause, pace and pitch, which is what you can change about your voice while you are speaking. This piece is the first half. Get the shape right and the delivery has something to carry. Get it wrong and the delivery is decoration on a building with no frame.
The five structures
1. TED-style: one idea, argued
The shape. One core idea. A personal story that earns your right to raise it, then the insight the story produced, then what you want done about it.
What it is for. A conference talk. A keynote. Any twenty minutes where you need exactly one thing remembered a week later.
Where people go wrong. They bring three ideas because all three are good. The room then remembers none of them. The discipline of this format is entirely subtractive: you decide the one sentence you want repeated in the corridor, and everything that does not serve it comes out. If you cannot write that sentence down before you start building, you are not ready to build.
2. Hero’s journey: the shape of earned change
The shape. Ordinary life. A disruption. The refusal, then the reluctant start. Obstacles that cost something real. The breakthrough. And the return, carrying something worth having.
What it is for. Founder stories. Anything where the audience needs to feel what the change cost, not just be told it happened.
Where people go wrong. They skip the cost. A version where everything went well is not a story, it is a CV read aloud, and audiences disengage from it within a minute because there is nothing at stake. The obstacles are not the boring part you rush through to reach the good news. They are the reason anyone believes the good news.
3. Problem, agitate, solution: the shape that gets a decision
The shape. Name the problem plainly. Then make it hurt properly: the second-order costs, what it means in twelve months, what it is costing right now while nobody names it. Only then put the solution down.
What it is for. Sales. Investor pitches. Internal cases for spending money. Any room that has to decide something rather than merely enjoy something.
Where people go wrong. They rush to the solution, because the solution is the part they are proud of. But a solution offered before the room feels the problem sounds like a product looking for a use. The agitation step is the one everybody skips and the one that does the work.
Handle it honestly. Agitation means describing the real consequences accurately, not inventing a crisis. A room can tell the difference, and losing them on credibility is worse than losing them on structure.
4. Numbered framework: the shape that survives interruption
The shape. A stated number of points, each carrying one lesson. “There are three things that decide whether a launch works. The first is…”
What it is for. Teaching something. Any room that will take notes. And crucially: any room that interrupts.
Where people go wrong. They pick too many. Three is comfortable, four is the practical limit, five is a list nobody retains.
This is the safest structure under pressure, and that is worth more than it sounds. If someone cuts in during point two, you can take the question and return with “so that was the second thing. The third is…” and the room comes straight back with you. Every other format on this list loses its thread when broken. If you are speaking to a board, or to anyone senior enough to interrupt whenever they like, this is usually the right choice on those grounds alone.
5. Testimony: the shape of “I have lived this”
The shape. How it was before. The turning point. How it is now. What you learned. And what the room should do with it.
What it is for. All-hands meetings. Change communications. Any moment where your credibility comes from having been through the thing rather than having studied it.
Where people go wrong. They soften the “before” until it stops being true. A sanitised before makes the after meaningless, and the room, which usually knows roughly what happened anyway, quietly stops believing the rest.
Choosing, in twenty seconds
Ask one question: what does this room have to do when I sit down?
| The room has to… | Use |
|---|---|
| Remember one thing next week | TED-style |
| Believe the change was real and cost something | Hero’s journey |
| Decide, approve, or fund | Problem, agitate, solution |
| Understand and apply it, or will interrupt | Numbered framework |
| Trust that you have actually been there | Testimony |
Two practical notes. You can nest these, and experienced speakers do: a numbered framework with a hero’s journey inside point two is a common and strong combination. But choose a parent shape first: two structures of equal weight is the same as none.
And when you genuinely cannot decide, take the numbered framework. It is the most forgiving under interruption, the easiest to rehearse, and the hardest to lose your place in. It is rarely the most memorable choice. It is almost never the wrong one.
The stories inside the structure
The structure is the skeleton. What people actually remember is the anecdotes hanging off it, and those have shapes of their own. STAR, CAR, nested loops and callbacks. Those four are worth a piece on their own, and they are the difference between a talk that is well organised and a talk that is worth listening to.
What to do with this today
Take the next thing you have to speak at. Before you write a word:
- Write down what the room has to do afterwards. One sentence.
- Pick the structure from the table.
- Write your one core sentence, the thing you want repeated in the corridor.
- Draft into the shape, not into a document.
Then, and only then, worry about how you sound. I have watched a lot of people try it the other way round, spending weeks on delivery for a talk that had no shape, and it does not work. There is no delivery good enough to rescue a talk with no spine.
If you want a hand picking the shape for something specific, that is exactly what the free first thirty minutes is for. Bring the talk you are dreading and we will find its structure on the call. The full method, structure and delivery together, is what the public speaking course covers over eight weeks, and there is a free public speaking course here on the site if you would rather work through it yourself first.
Common questions
What is the best structure for a speech?
There is no single best one. Pick by what the room has to do afterwards: TED-style to be remembered, hero's journey to be believed, problem-agitate-solution to get a decision, a numbered framework to be understood, testimony to be trusted. The wrong shape well delivered still fails.
How long should each section be?
Roughly: ten per cent opening, seventy-five per cent middle, fifteen per cent close. Most people invert it, spending three minutes arriving and thirty seconds landing the point. The close is the part anyone repeats afterwards, so it earns real time.
Should I write the speech out in full?
Write it out to find out what you think, then reduce it to the structure and rehearse from that. Reading from a full script flattens pace and pitch, and you lose the room. The page is a thinking tool, not a performance aid.
Can I mix two structures?
Yes, and experienced speakers usually do: a numbered framework with a hero's journey inside point two, for instance. But pick a parent shape first. Two structures of equal weight is the same as none, and the room cannot follow it.
Does structure matter more than delivery?
They fail differently. Bad delivery makes a good talk hard to listen to. No structure makes a well-delivered talk impossible to follow or repeat. Structure first, because there is no delivery good enough to rescue a talk with no shape.