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Perfect Pacing: The Invisible Conversation With Your Audience

Three practical ways to improve your pacing for a more impactful presentation.

On Stage

Public speaking

Stage performance

Michael

Port

Co-Founder

minute read

Published on

February 17, 2025

Is your speech a conversation with your audience or a monologue?

How fast or slow you speak onstage and the pauses, or “beats,” you take between words are crucial facets of onstage performance.

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Because onstage, how you say what you’re going to say is just as important as what you say. Your delivery—the way you combine vocal techniques, pacing, onstage movement, emotion, and other performance aspects—can either amplify your message or weaken it.

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But the traditional pacing advice out there—speaking more slowly to convey negative emotions, faster for positive ones, and varying your pacing to “match your content”—misses the mark.

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While there is a sliver of truth in this conventional wisdom, it leaves out one of the most important concepts speakers should remember: your speech is a conversation between you and your audience.

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Everyone listening to you is talking back to you during your speech. Fortunately, they’re not allowed to do it out loud. (After all, it would be much less fun if they did. Although, sometimes they do—but that’s a story for another time.)

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Your audience is having a conversation with you, in the sense that they are always thinking something in response to what you just said. As speakers, it’s essential to anticipate this by crafting content that responds to your audience and delivering it in a way that makes it feel like a conversation.

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The key for better pacing.

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Understanding the invisible conversation with your audience is essential for adding momentum to your language and driving your speech forward. It helps you craft a persuasive argument, instill a sense of urgency, and connect with your audience in a deeper way.

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For example, I’m standing in front of a room of aspiring and professional speakers, authors, and thought leaders and I say, “If you want to be up on the keynote stage, you’ll get more speaking invitations if you deliver visionary ideas rather than standard how-to-style advice.”

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I know my audience. I know most of them will immediately think, “What about the practical side of things? Can’t I do how-to stuff and visionary stuff as well?”

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I respond: “It’s not that you can’t slip in some how-to advice in a visionary speech. In fact, you probably should. When you live in Visionarytown, you can always go back and visit Expertville—that’s totally fine.” This assures my audience while answering their immediate concerns. It allows them to follow along with my speech while I slowly earn their trust each time I resolve a concern and speak directly to their thoughts.

Full Transcript

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Truly knowing your audience and having a well-crafted script for your speech are essential to achieving masterful pacing.

Almost everything you say—especially in a visionary speech—will evoke a response in your audience. If you’ve done your research and know your audience, understand the problems they face, and focus on helping them solve these problems with new and/or alternative approaches, you’ll be able to craft a speech that answers their concerns, builds trust, and solves their problems.

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Almost all speakers hit this barrier—here are three things that can help.

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Even when speakers know the importance of the invisible conversation, almost all of them encounter this problem during the rehearsal process: they get used to their speech. The vocal contrast dissipates, and their language becomes steady, flat, and sometimes even robotic. They start to recite their speech the way they learned it in rehearsal—and it starts to become a little bit rhythmically staged which, to the audience, sounds off or “speechy.”

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Now, this is normal. And it doesn’t mean that your rehearsal isn’t working, or that you're not rehearsing correctly. It’s simply a signal that you need to shake up your speech.

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Fortunately, there are many simple and practical ways to shake up your speech and get out of the rut. Here are three you can try that will help you achieve the perfect pacing for your unique speech:

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#1 Write a Ghost Script

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If your speech feels more like a monologue than a conversation, it might mean you haven’t completely put your audience first. To focus your attention on them and ignite a moving, rhythmic “conversation,” try writing a ghost script.

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How it works: Take your script and read it as if you were an audience member. After you share any idea or information, take a moment and think about the concerns, questions, and comments that come to mind at that very moment.

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Ask yourself: What would someone in the audience say after each new idea, or at different points in a story? What would they be thinking? What would they be asking?

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Perhaps some of their responses are pushback against your ideas. Maybe they ask why— and need a clearer explanation before they can move on and follow along with your core message.

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Whatever these invisible “ghosts” are saying, it’s essential to make sure that your next line responds to their queries and comments.

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After writing a ghost script, you might realize you need to revise and rework sections of your speech to include these new responses to your audience. That’s fantastic—each iteration of your speech should make it more transformational, more effective, and more referable.

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#2 Do a Speed-Through

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In theater, directors can tell when a cast gets into a rehearsal or performance rut and starts “phoning it in.” (This is theater-speak for doing something on autopilot.)

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When this happens, directors often call for a speed-through—performing the whole show in roughly a third of the actual run time required. So, if your speech runs 60 minutes, fly through it with full commitment in 20 minutes. It’s a lot of fun, and by the end, you’re exhausted and you might have even worked up a sweat.

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Speed-throughs are ultra-effective for destroying monotony and breaking up the molasses that starts to form around your performance after rehearsing for a while.

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Try it yourself: If your performance is starting to feel robotic or phoned in, deliver your speech with as much energy as possible–but in a fraction of the time–and watch how a new, more perfectly paced performance arises after. And don’t just skip the beats. Always feel the beats.

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Here’s the thing… sometimes after doing a 60-minute speech in 20 minutes, a speaker will realize that’s actually the pace they should be going at. Turns out, they have a 20-minute speech, not a 60-minute speech.

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You see, it takes a lot more drive and vocal energy than you think to effectively move your performance forward and deliver your message in a transformational way. If your audience doesn't feel a sense of urgency behind your words, then they likely won’t see the importance in them.

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settle or “get used to” the way you perform your speech.

ask yourself: “Is there a sense of urgency in my speech? Or am I moving at a pace that suggests what I’m sharing isn’t important?”

#3 Identify the Peaks

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When you know exactly where the most emotion-packed moments of your speech lie–the “peak” moments of your speech—it’s much easier to effectively drive towards that point. On the contrary, if you don’t know where you’re trying to go, you might find yourself simply sharing information—rather than crafting specific emotional and transformational moments.

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Practical tip: Highlight the peak moments in your script that you need to build up to. These might be specific insights, punchlines, ideas, feelings, or resolutions that mark your speech. Use drive, pacing, and vocal energy to build up to those key moments.

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Throughout your speech, your language is like the waves that move your audience towards where you want to go. All waves are different in size and strength, but they all serve to move your audience in the direction you choose. And your audience will ride the waves of your language. Think of these powerful “peak” moments as the biggest waves in the set of your speech.

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Now, you can’t make every moment a peak moment—if your whole speech is huge crashing waves, it would be completely overwhelming and even frightening for your audience. But if your whole speech is little tiny waves or even just ripples, eventually they’ll get bored.

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Your goal is to sprinkle those perfect peak waves—the ones your audience is anxiously waiting to ride—throughout your speech. This creates a rich vocal contrast that engages your audience and allows them to participate in the ideas you’re sharing.

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You’ll create the excitement of seeing the approaching wave, the effort of paddling to catch the wave, the thrill of riding it, and the release and relaxing recovery afterwards.

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When you really work on your drive and pacing as a speaker, you’ll start to understand where to put your beats so that you’re creating space for people to breathe, to relax, to think, to feel—and to be transformed.

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Engage your audience in an active conversation.

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Pacing is one of the performance elements that has a huge impact on how engaging your speech feels. One of your goals onstage is to make each audience member feel like they are actively participating in the invisible conversation you’re having.

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Make them work for it a little bit. They want to feel a sense of abandon. They need language to ride your language so they can fly and dream. When your speech moves at a pace where, in order to keep up, they need to stay engaged, they’ll experience more insights, more connection, and more transformation.

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As you put these three pacing techniques into practice, you’ll be able to craft an exhilarating audience experience and keep your audience on the edge of their seats—with just your words. Your speech will seem natural, effortless, and even musical.

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When you find your voice and add momentum to your language, you’ll be able to craft a powerful transformational experience for your audience—one they never forget. And neither will you.

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‍

Almost all speakers hit this barrier—here are three things that can help.

‍

Now, this is normal. And it doesn’t mean that your rehearsal isn’t working, or that you're not rehearsing correctly. It’s simply a signal that you need to shake up your speech.

‍

Fortunately, there are many simple and practical ways to shake up your speech and get out of the rut. Here are three you can try that will help you achieve the perfect pacing for your unique speech:

‍

#1 Write a Ghost Script

‍

Ask yourself: What would someone in the audience say after each new idea, or at different points in a story? What would they be thinking? What would they be asking?

‍

Perhaps some of their responses are pushback against your ideas. Maybe they ask why— and need a clearer explanation before they can move on and follow along with your core message.

‍

Whatever these invisible “ghosts” are saying, it’s essential to make sure that your next line responds to their queries and comments.

‍

#2 Do a Speed-Through

‍

In theater, directors can tell when a cast gets into a rehearsal or performance rut and starts “phoning it in.” (This is theater-speak for doing something on autopilot.)

‍

Speed-throughs are ultra-effective for destroying monotony and breaking up the molasses that starts to form around your performance after rehearsing for a while.

‍

Dont

settle or “get used to” the way you perform your speech.

ask yourself: “Is there a sense of urgency in my speech? Or am I moving at a pace that suggests what I’m sharing isn’t important?”

Truly knowing your audience and having a well-crafted script for your speech are essential to achieving masterful pacing.

#3 Identify the Peaks

‍

You’ll create the excitement of seeing the approaching wave, the effort of paddling to catch the wave, the thrill of riding it, and the release and relaxing recovery afterwards.

‍

Engage your audience in an active conversation.

‍

When you find your voice and add momentum to your language, you’ll be able to craft a powerful transformational experience for your audience—one they never forget. And neither will you.

Don't