How to give a TED talk: find the idea, write it, rehearse it

To give a TED or TEDx talk, build it around one idea you can say in a single sentence, then spend the time limit proving it. TEDx talks run under 18 minutes, and many organizers want far less. Write a full script in spoken language, cut it until it fits with a minute to spare, and rehearse it out loud for weeks, not days. The stage presence people admire in good talks is mostly the result of that rehearsal.

What makes a talk TED-style

TED runs its own conferences, and TEDx events are independently organized local events that follow TED's rules. Both share a format that is stricter than most conference talks, and knowing the rules early saves you from writing the wrong talk. According to the TEDx rules on ted.com, as of this writing:

• Talks are typically under 18 minutes and given by one person. A longer format, up to 30 minutes, may suit an interview or a dialogue.
• There are no panels and no audience Q&A.
• Speakers can't promote their own products, books or businesses, or those of their employer.
• No inflammatory political or religious agenda, and no "us versus them" framing.
• Scientific claims must rest on research, and speakers should be open about the evidence behind them.
• TEDx events may neither pay nor charge speakers.

The time limit is the rule that shapes everything else. TED's head, Chris Anderson, has explained it as a forcing device: speakers used to 45-minute lectures have to decide what they actually want to say. The official TEDx speaker guide makes the same point from the audience's side, and adds that "shorter talks are not lesser talks." Rules get revised, so read the current version on ted.com and ask your event organizer for anything specific to their stage.

Find an idea, not a topic

Most weak talks fail here, before a word of the script exists. A topic is what the talk is about. An idea is what the talk claims. The TEDx speaker guide defines a good idea as one that takes evidence or observations and draws a larger conclusion from them, and warns that a story or a list of facts is not an idea on its own. Anderson calls the idea a talk's throughline and says you should be able to state it in one sentence. Think of it as a logline for a talk: if it takes a paragraph, you have more than one talk.

The last line works because it is arguable, the speaker has seen it happen over years of Saturday sessions, and it suggests something a listener could try. Aim for under 15 words, with no "and" joining two claims.

Then test it. The TEDx guide suggests three questions: is it new to this audience, is it interesting to a room full of people outside your field, and is it factual and realistic? Ask someone you respect who doesn't work in your area. If they shrug at any of the three, refine the sentence before you outline anything. You don't need to be the world's leading authority, the guide says, but you do need to know your subject well and fact-check everything you plan to say.

How long a TED talk should be

Eighteen minutes is a ceiling, not a target. Organizers assign slots, and at many TEDx events the slot is ten or twelve minutes. Ask for yours before you write, then convert it to words. At a conversational pace of roughly 130 to 150 words a minute, the numbers look like this:

Plan the talk to about 90 percent of the slot. Laughter, a slide that loads slowly and the pause you take after a hard sentence all cost time, and nerves tend to make speakers either rush or stretch.

A structure that works

There is no single correct shape, but the TEDx speaker guide offers one that suits most idea talks. Paraphrased, it runs in four moves:

1. Make the audience care, with a relatable example or an intriguing question.
2. State the idea clearly and with conviction.
3. Give the evidence, and show how the idea could work in practice.
4. End with what would change for the audience if they accepted it.

The guide adds that the structure should be invisible. Don't announce that you have three points and are now moving to the second. Let each section hand the listener to the next. In his 2016 TED talk on public speaking, Anderson added a related rule: build the idea piece by piece from concepts the audience already understands.

Here is the repair café talk planned for a 12-minute slot:

Order the evidence by what a listener must know before the next piece makes sense, and within that, from least to most surprising. Then cut whatever the idea can survive without, including things you consider important. A live demonstration is show, don't tell on a stage, and it tends to be the part people remember. Give a real objection its own section and answer it honestly: an audience trusts a speaker who names the strongest case against them. In the terms of ethos, pathos and logos, these talks earn credibility through evidence and fairness more than through the speaker's résumé.

Openings

The TEDx guide's advice for openings is specific: get to the idea quickly, don't spend the opening on yourself, and don't open with a string of statistics. If the audience already thinks about your subject, state the idea early. If they never do, start from something they care about and connect it. Starting in medias res, in the middle of a moment, is a reliable way to do that.

No greeting, no biography, no thanks to the organizers. The audience meets a person and a problem in the first sentence. There are more patterns like this in how to start a speech.

Endings

Don't spend the ending summarizing what you said. Tell the audience what their life looks like if the idea is right, give them one thing to do if a call to action fits, and stop. The guide rules out ending with a pitch: no book cover, no logo, no fundraising ask. A callback to the opening image, here Walt and his vacuum cleaner, gives the talk a clean last line. For more ways to land it, see how to end a speech.

Write the script for the ear

Write the whole talk out, even if you never read from it on stage. A full script is where you find the gaps, time the sections and cut. The TEDx guide asks for concise, natural language, present tense and strong verbs. In practice that means sentences short enough to say on one breath, one claim per sentence, and numbers rounded the way people say them.

Repeat the idea two or three times in different words, at the start, after the evidence and at the end. On the page that would be redundant. In a room, it is how people who drifted for a minute find their way back. Read every paragraph aloud as you draft, and rewrite any sentence you stumble on.

Plan slides last, and only where a picture says something better than you can. The TEDx guide is precise about them: one point per slide, as little text as possible, no bullet points, type at 42 points or larger in a common sans-serif font, and 1920×1080 pixels at 16:9 if the organizer hasn't specified. Use only images you own or have permission to use, and credit Creative Commons images on the slide. Many good talks have no slides at all.

Rehearse on a schedule

Rehearsal is where a talk stops sounding written. Nancy Duarte, a presentation designer and author, wrote that she spent about 18 hours rehearsing for an 18-minute one. An hour per minute on stage is a fair benchmark. If you're offered a slot six weeks out, a plan like this one leaves room for it:

1. Six weeks out: settle the idea

   Write the one-sentence idea at the top of a blank document. Test it on two people outside your field, and send it to the organizer so surprises surface early.

2. Five weeks out: outline with a time budget

   List every piece of evidence, order it, then cut. Give each section a time, like the table above, adding up to 90 percent of the slot. A speech outline template has the fields ready.

3. Four weeks out: draft and cut the script

   Write the full script, read it aloud with a timer, and cut until a relaxed read lands under your target. Most first drafts run well over.

4. Three weeks out: get off the page

   Rehearse from the outline instead of the script. Record audio and listen back for the sentences you always change: keep your spoken version, it's usually better. Build slides now, if you need them.

5. Two weeks out: rehearse for people

   Give the talk to different listeners: a friend, a colleague, a small group, someone who makes you nervous. Video one run and watch for pacing and shifting weight. The TEDx guide asks speakers to practice standing still in one spot.

6. The final week: rehearse the real conditions

   Run it with a countdown timer and checkpoints, so you know where you should be at each third. Ask the organizer for stage time with the clicker and the confidence monitor. Prepare a shorter landing you can jump to if you run long.

Should you memorize it word for word? The safest middle path is to memorize the structure, the first and last lines and the opening sentence of each section, and say the rest in whatever words come. What to avoid is a half-memorized script, where you lose the thread searching for the exact sentence. The TEDx guide notes that a talk called "over-rehearsed" usually means stilted, and the cure is more rehearsal, aimed at sounding like one side of a conversation. How to memorize a speech covers the techniques.

Mistakes that sink idea talks

• A survey instead of an idea. Ten interesting facts about a field leave the audience with nothing to repeat at dinner.
• An opening about you. Thanks, credentials and how you got here can wait until later in the talk, or go entirely.
• Statistics before a story. Numbers land once the audience cares. Before that they sound like homework.
• A disguised pitch. Mentioning your startup, book or employer's product breaks the TEDx rules, and audiences notice the shift in tone long before the logo appears.
• Slides that carry the script. If the audience is reading, they aren't listening.
• Running long. Organizers keep tight schedules, and every minute you run over comes out of someone else's slot. Cut at your desk, not on stage.

Writing the talk in Strokes

A talk goes through more drafts than its length suggests, and the cuts are the hard part. In Strokes you can keep the idea sentence, the evidence list, the outline and the script as separate documents in one project folder. Version history saves as you write, so when you cut a 2,400-word draft down to 1,700, the longer version is still there to preview, with the changes marked, and restore if you cut the wrong story. Select a paragraph and press ⌘K to ask for a version that's easier to say aloud, or open the AI Assistant beside the script and ask it whether each section still serves your one-sentence idea. When it's done, export the script to PDF or Word for the organizer.