At this point in your speech preparation, you’ve spent considerable time think-ing about your audience, narrowing your topic, and finding quality information to use in your presentation. Now it’s time to begin Step 3: Compose by putting all this information together in the central idea—the thesis—of your speech. This will help you structure your presentation.

Your speech thesis is one complete sentence that identifies the central idea of your presentation for your audience. This statement is the foundation for composing your speech. Everything from what points you make and which visual aids you use to how you draft your conclusion will relate to it. You will eventually share the speech thesis with your audience as part of the speech’s introduction. A compelling speech thesis answers the question, What is the overall point or position I want to convey to my audience? For example, in Jane McGonigal’s presentation at the TED conference, her speech thesis was “Playing games can extend your life by 10 years.” This central idea helped her compose her main points, stay on topic, and inform her audience about what she wanted them to know.

A good speech thesis meets three requirements. First, it evolves from your specific purpose statement. You adapt the idea based on what you discover during your research and to be more specific to your actual speech. Second, the speech thesis clearly demonstrates to the audience your overall point or position on the topic. Finally, the thesis provides clues as to how your main points will develop. Consider how these requirements are met in the following example:

Specific purpose: I want to inform my audience how to effectively handle bullying in the workplace.

Speech thesis: Workplace bullying is an intolerable situation that can be effectively curbed through specific actions.

Although the speech thesis and specific purpose may seem similar, there is an important difference: the speech thesis is stated directly during the introduction of your presentation, whereas the specific purpose guides your research.