You’re somewhat annoyed. You made it a few levels into the International Speech Contest with your touching coming of age story but your journey ends here - you’ve lost the contest. You were dramatic without being manipulative and you had great stage presence. The guy who won wasn’t all that bad - which is why you’re only a little disappointed and not fuming. Still, as you look down the judges scoring guidelines you had him beat in every category. What went wrong?

The only thing the winner really beat you at was humor. You know you’re not funny and never tried to be. The winner had the audience laughing quite a few times. But the judging form doesn’t say anything about who was funnier, so why should that matter?

All things being equal, a funny speech will beat an unfunny speech almost always.

A funny contest speech is not standup comedy. If you try standup, you’ll get killed because of the way the scoring sheet is laid out (which places value on story organization and original ideas) and also the tradition of judges not passing through pure smartass material.

You should try to get the audience to laugh out loud a few times during the speech. If you’re not funny, a little story or ideas that make people smile is better than nothing. Think of the Family Circus cartoon strip. It’s not laugh out loud funny, but the little vignettes are feel-good cute and can help out. I’d recommend going for zingers though if you can, though.

Being funny helps you stand out because it’s not easy to be clever. It also helps establish an audience connection and if you get laughs, it’s clear to the judges you have that connection. Humor can keep a depressing speech light and (especially if you’re a smartass) keeps inspirational speeches from turning into a Hallmark card.

When I recently watched five past world-wide winning International Speech Contests on tape, four of them were laugh out loud funny at times. The fifth guy had a few moments but wasn’t all that on, though I didn’t think had any business winning making it past Division for a number of other reasons. I’ve seen completely unfunny speeches win at the District level too, though they were not the ones I would have chosen. So it just shows there’s no magic formula for winning one of these things. Just smart things you can do to increase your odds.