Start with the destination

Before you decide which stories to tell or how you're going to begin, ask yourself this:

When I sit down, what do I want my audience to take away with them? What do I want them to think, feel or understand?

Try to answer in a single sentence.

For a wedding speech, it might be:

These two make each other braver.

For a 50th birthday:

She has spent her life making room for other people.

For a work presentation:

This change looks complicated, but it's actually going to make our jobs easier.

Notice that none of those tells you everything the speech will contain. Instead, each gives the speech a direction.

Find your thread

There's an important difference between the topic of your speech and its thread.

Your topic is what you're talking about; your thread is what you're saying about it.

My daughter's wedding is a topic.

My fiercely independent daughter has found someone who doesn't try to tame that independence, but delights in it is a thread.

The history of our organisation is a topic.

We've survived because we've always been willing to change is a thread.

The thread gives all those stories and facts somewhere to go.

Without one, a speech can easily become a collection of things you wanted to mention. With one, those individual pieces begin to feel as though they belong together.

Don’t try to put everything in

I can hear you protesting – but there’s so much good stuff to include! I know – sometimes selecting what to leave out is the trickiest bit.

Say you’re writing a wedding speech and these are your notes:

• that hilarious childhood story

• school years

• first job

• disastrous holiday

• how they met

• family in-joke

• achievements

• people who need thanking

• lovely things everyone says about them

Now you're trying to work out how to squeeze all of it into eight minutes.

Don't.

Go back to your thread and ask:

Which two or three of these things help me show what I really want to say?

One story, told properly, can reveal far more about a person than seven anecdotes crammed into thirty seconds each.

The things you leave out aren't unimportant. They simply belong somewhere other than this particular speech.

Everything has to earn its place.

Don't tell us who someone is. Let us see them.

Imagine you're giving a speech about your friend Sam.

You could say:

Sam is incredibly generous.

That's perfectly clear. But it's unlikely to be the thing anyone remembers tomorrow.

You could go a little further:

Sam is always the first person to help when somebody needs something.

Better. Now we know what you mean by generous.

But what if instead you tell us about the Saturday morning when Sam arrived at your house with a trailer, two coffees and absolutely no idea how long it was going to take to move everything you owned?

Now we can see Sam.

The audience doesn't need you to tell them she's generous. You've given them the evidence and allowed them to reach that conclusion themselves.

Specific stories give people something to picture. And what people can picture, they're much more likely to remember.

Think in moments, not information

A speech isn't an essay read aloud. You're creating an experience for people who will hear your words once, in real time. So instead of asking only, What information do I need to include?, think about the moments you want to create.

Perhaps there's a moment of recognition:

That's exactly what she's like.

A moment of surprise:

I never knew that.

A moment of laughter.

You don't need to manufacture emotion or force a joke into every paragraph. But you do need to remember that you're speaking to people, not delivering information at them.

Get to the good stuff

Speeches have accumulated some strange habits.

For those of you who don't know me...

When I was first asked to give this speech...

I'm not very good at public speaking, but...

Often, none of this is necessary. If you've got a wonderful story, an intriguing observation or a line that immediately tells us something about the person or subject, start there.

You don't need to spend the first minute announcing that you're about to give a speech - just give it!

Write for ears, not eyes

When someone reads your writing, they can slow down. They can reread a sentence. They can go back to the previous paragraph. Your audience can't. Once you've said a sentence, it's gone.

That's why speech writing usually needs to be simpler and more conversational than writing designed to be read.

Some tips:

·         Use shorter sentences where they help.

·         Use contractions if that's how you naturally speak.

·         Repeat an important phrase if you want people to remember it.

·         Give a significant idea some space instead of rushing straight into the next one.

·         And read your draft aloud.

I cannot overstate this last point – don’t just read it, imagining you’re saying it. Actually read it aloud. You'll hear awkward sentences, unnecessary words and unnatural phrases that your eyes happily skimmed over. If you keep stumbling over the same sentence, don't practise saying it better - rewrite the sentence.

Finish with your thread.

You've told your stories. You've made people laugh. You've thanked the people who need thanking.

Now go back to the question you asked before you started writing:

What do I want my audience to remember?

If your speech has been about two people who make each other braver, that's where you want to land.

If it's about a friend who has spent fifty years making room for other people, bring us back to that.

If it's about an organisation that has survived because it has always been willing to change, let your final words point towards the next change.

A good ending doesn't need to introduce a new idea.

It makes us realise why everything we've just heard belonged in the same speech.

Know what you want to say, but can't find the shape?

That's often the hardest part of writing a speech.

I can help you find the thread, decide what belongs and turn the stories and ideas in your head into a speech that still sounds unmistakably like you.

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