How to make an event like a beauty pageant particularly riveting and engaging.

1. Start way behind schedule. In order to do this, choose judges that avail each and every salon service an hour before the show actually starts. Or you could choose judges that simply have the guts to let people believe we have all day to wait for them. Choose those judges who believe they are very important. They are those who do not know that the reason the pageant needs them and cannot start without them is that their valuable subjective judgments play a crucial role, not because they have an unlimited sense of entitlement.

2. Assign a boring host. Choose public speaking veterans who have gained the accolades of their peers with probably a century of experience kicking ass in the hosting industry. Their long experience made them sank into complacency as they are certain that even though they are pulling the flow of the pageant together with their dragging spiels and effortless vocal nuances, they still believe they are doing a great job. Make them introduce the board of judges in a time duration equivalent to one judge per day. This way, the audience which is mostly composed of young and highly-energetic students, will be able to relate to the host because the generation gap is non-existent.

3.  Cram audience's void of expectations with pop dances everytime candidates prepare for the subsequent exposures. Do this until they implode and then explode.  (Pa'no kaya yan? Try mo!) After all, what is more exciting than seeing group after group of dancers who practically do the same thing? Plus, the hype gets hotter when the audience remembers the fact that they have already seen it a night ago. Surely, not a single disturbed soul would exclaim, 'Wake me up when that ends."

4. In the middle of the event, have an unexpected power outage. This is a very good strategy to elicit shrills and boos from the audience, hence augmenting their engagement and excitement. This is also a very good example to let everyone know how good the organizers are in foreseeing the foreseeable and in preparing for the possible circumstances. Plus, it will make the audience believe that the delayed onset of the program caused the power outage, a laudable feat since to make that happen requires excellent organizing and preparation skills.

Finally,

5. Make the judges choose semi-finalists for the question and answer round who possess the following qualities:

a. deaf

b. mute

c. with a stammer

d. articulate but not precise

e.with elegance and poise that pale in light of others.

These can be done by any of the following:

a. make judges ask questions that are really, really simple (e.g. What is your name?) and voila! candidates who think a little more advanced than one-celled amoebae, suddenly become deaf. One possible explanation: you are dealing with troglodytes there, if not even more primitive life forms.

b. See letter a. Or throw the candidate a question for which he or she is totally ignorant: like what is the probability density of finding a particular electron in a cloud by evaluating the integral of the square of the wave function over all space, or ask  a freshman for his or her opinion on the independence of his or her school from a system he/she is still getting to familiarize himself /herself with. Remember that a lot of people cannot formulate their own opinion without hearing first the opinion of others. That's sad, but it's true. The candidate will certainly turn mute, and if ever he or she manages to speak, he/she will say, 'Thank you for that question. I think I need an interpreter."

c. See a and b. This could be fully explained by the fight for mental coherence. Fill the gap with err, uhm, oohs and aahs. Ha ha.

d. See letter b. There is also a case where a candidate is not ignorant of the question but to obtain the desired effect (that is, articulate but not precise) throw them a  question that is as obscure as Harry Potter under the invisibility cloak.(Imagine that!) The articulate contestant doesn't become mute, deaf or doesn't stammer. However, he or she gasps for sense in his or her answer. Try answering this: If the Philippines is composed of three major islands Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, how will this contribute to the fight of China and the Philippines over Spratlys? Probably the best response to this aside from asking the judge if she could answer the question herself would be: "That is a very wonderful question, Ma'am. Keep it up!"

e. This can only be done through sole subjectivity and taste of the ones who choose. This last characteristic is the one that will merit the best reaction from the audience, making the event really enjoyable and riveting: an UPROAR. For best results, choose these candidates to win and for sure the uproar will be coupled with an OUTRAGE.

If you do not want to make your beauty pageant engaging and riveting, disregard all of the above.