Xiaohongshu
- Hosted by Public Speaking Society
🎃 Halloween Special: Tales After Dark 🎃
Ready to level up your public speaking skills? Join us on TUESDAY 27th October from 18:15 to 19:45 in Chadwick G07 for a spooky edition of our weekly skills workshop!
🕯️ This Week’s Theme: Suspense!
Every great scary story knows one secret: it’s not what you reveal, it’s when you reveal it. This week we’ll learn how to keep an audience on the edge of their seats by controlling exactly when information lands. You’ll set up an ordinary scene, slip in the detail that doesn’t feel right, hold back the reveal, and use the silence just before the turning point.
💡 What to Expect:
- 🪝 The skills: writing a first sentence that makes people want the second, creating gaps that build curiosity, keeping your audience in the dark without leaving them lost, choosing details that make them see the scene, and finding the emotion everyone can relate to
- 🔍 Activity 1 – Make Us See It: tell a 60–90 second everyday story, like an embarrassing moment, a journey gone wrong or the strangest person you’ve ever met, using three vivid details that put us right there
- 😱 Activity 2 – Build the Suspense: turn an eerie prompt into a mini-thriller. Picture yourself alone in the library after closing, with footsteps upstairs... or 47 missed calls from the same unknown number
- 🕯️ Activity 3 – Tales After Dark: bring it all together in your own 2-minute story, true or invented, with a handout ready in case your mind goes blank
- 🎤 Open mic to close the night, with friendly feedback from fellow members after every activity
🦇 You’ll leave able to:
- Open with a hook that makes people lean in
- Build tension by revealing information at the right moment
- Keep your audience curious without confusing them
- Use specific details to make a scene come alive
- End with a payoff your audience remembers
👻 Costumes are very welcome but absolutely not required!