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1) Choosing the right rant topic
Decide on a subject that you feel really passionate, angry or crazy about. It doesn’t actually matter if you are right or wrong, just make sure that you feel strongly enough about your topic that you are willing to share this with others, whether you are invited to or not.
Note that the whole point of a rant is that you don’t actually need any specialised knowledge in the area, as long as you have an opinion and a strong emotional attachment to the subject, you are ready to rant about it.
2) Finding your audience
Your audience does not need to know that they are going to be listening to your rant. In fact it is usually better if they don’t know and ideally they should be a captive audience. This could be someone you are sitting in the car with on a long journey, or a group of people that you are presenting to. That way it is difficult to interrupt you or leave.
3) Practice, practice, practice
As with anything, practice makes perfect. Perfect your ranting style by ranting often.
Pets are a great captive audience for practicing your ranting technique. In my experience, cats tend to be disinterested, reptiles impartial but dogs are perfect as they are easy to read. Carefully watch the dog for a reaction, so that you can gauge whether your rant is having the desired affect.
Ensure that the pet understands that you are ranting to them and not at them.
4) Preparing the mind
Prepare mentally for your rant by winding yourself up in your head. Why do you feel so strongly about your rant topic? Does it make you angry? What makes you care so passionately about it? What could you do better and differently? If you are a shy person or new to ranting you may want to fuel your rant with some alcohol.
Bottle the emotion and try to look outwardly calm and collected. It is important to get yourself really worked up about your subject matter, and remember you’re right.
Leave your listening skills behind – ranting is not about listening.
5) Delivering your rant
Start your rant as you would an ordinary conversation or presentation, best not to give away that you are about to rant about something at this stage.
Build up slowly and gradually but with increasing momentum and pace. That way, by the time your audience has realised that they are listening to a rant it’s too late.
Make sure that your facial expression and physical gestures express your feelings, flail your arms about, roll eyes and use a lot of inflection in your voice or swear (anything beyond mild emphatic swearing is not recommended). Take care that the pitch of your voice doesn’t go too high, or you may find that you are whingeing instead of ranting.
6) Closing effectively
Build up to the conclusion of your rant. I find the best rant finale is to peak with a grand gesture such as throwing your arms in the air and slamming your hands palm down on a table in front of you. For maximum effect, follow up your grand gesture with a swift and humble close. This tends to leave your audience in stunned silence.
7) Other ways to rant
There are many other ways that you can rant; by email, using social media such as Twitter or Facebook or even create a blog to rant on.
The important thing to remember about a written rant is to deliver it as you would to an audience. Use little or no white space; reiterate the main points by using capitals, bold text and underlines. For additional impact, you may want to consider using red font in some sections.
Final points:
Ranting is an art not a science – find your own way to rant that complements your personality.
You may have to find a continuous flow of new audience members for your rants. Networking is a good way to do this, online and offline.
Remember, ranting is not a popularity contest and there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
As you all know, there's no a better ranter than Homer Simpson. Find an episode where he's ranting about as an example.
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