Memorization Techniques – What To Do When You Are ‘Live’ and You Go Blank

I’ve been in two situations recently, which were both a challenge and a success, due to quick recovery techniques and experience with managing people in group situations. 

Here are two techniques for recovery when it’s all gone wrong, and you’re caught totally off-guard: 

1. You’re Delivering a Live Script and You Go Absolutely Blank   

If you are delivering a script and go absolutely blank with no idea of the exact next word, stop and take a moment to look around, make it look like you meant to take a natural pause.  At this point, the audience and other actors are not quite sure that you’ve lost your way, so you’ve only got a short time for recovery without anyone noticing! 

In your mind, replay the last sentence you do recall from the beginning.  You will need to put aside the growing internal anxiety.  If you let the anxiety gain control, it can be impossible to recover without re-doing the entire scene. 

If it’s appropriate to the scene, say the last few words of that sentence out loud again, making it look and sound like you were adding emphasis to the words.  At times I’ve found this to be a perfect way to kick-start the memory and sometimes it creates a better flow anyway.

Hopefully you do have some kind of prompter or fall back, when in large audience situations, but this crutch is only as good as your ability to find and recover the word once prompted. 

Practice, practice, practice…

 When it does happen to you, please know you are not alone! 

2. You’re an Event Moderator and the Main Speaker Abruptly Ends Too Early

This doesn’t happen with most professional speakers, who usually try to take advantage of any given time frame, but I recently found myself in front of 30 people when the speaker suddenly said to the audience, “And that’s all I have to say…”

 This was 45 minutes into a 90 minute marketing session.  As the representative of the organization who invited all of the attendees, I was caught totally off-guard!  We had marketed the event with a 7:30 am start and 90 minutes of content, so many of the attendees would have gotten out of bed early to arrive on time.  For a moment, panic almost took control!

Fortunately, I was sitting in the front row, so I immediately stood up and took control of the situation by suggesting the speaker elaborate on his previous ideas ‘live’ on his computer.  Then, while he fired up the laptop, I engaged the audience by giving out the door prizes via putting questions to them about the content already delivered.

 Once the laptop was up and running, I asked the speaker to show how to accomplish a very specific task, which he had previously mentioned was quite helpful.  He completed this task too quickly, so I prompted him for a second task.

 Finally, the audience took over, and I sat down for the next 40 minutes, watching the show transpire as he exchanged banter with some obviously well-experienced attendees.  Can you say, “Breathe a huge sigh of relief?”

I hope these techniques offer you some assistance in your time of need, but the most useful thing I’ve found in memorizing content is repetition and passion. 

 Memorization is brilliant exercise for the brain!  Just do it…

 Write On!

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