Career Development All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 4

Keeping Your Audience Captivated

IN THIS CHAPTER

Making your points stand out

Adding emphasis and intensity

Getting the audience to interact

Generating interest

Showing cause and effect

You’ve heard the idiom perhaps hundreds of times before, but do you know what it means to “keep the audience on the edge of their seats?” In movie, theater, or sports parlance, it means that people intently follow the action and excitement of a performance, sometimes in a mesmerized way. If it’s a story being told or shown (as in a video), it means riveting the audience’s attention so that they absolutely must find out what happens next. Entertainment professionals such as producers, actors, comedians, and magicians use suspense, curiosity, surprise, empathy, paradox, humor, and realism to keep people engaged. In innovative presentations when the audience sits on the edge of their seats, you own the room and have the audience’s attention and interest locked in tight.

An audience on the edge ...