The Speechwriter

Perspectives on Speechwriting

If you look at statistics, or at PowerPoint, or at documents, what you discover from all the research is that there is almost no recall. So you can use all the PowerPoints you want; you can use all the statistical presentations you want, have all the handouts you want; but almost none of that is remembered. What will be remembered are a few compelling stories that you share with your organization and with your team. And those will guide them when they are far away from you - which, by the way, is much of the day.

Professor Jay Conger, The Henry R. Kravis Research Chair Professor of Leadership, Kravis Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna College

If argument is necessary for adequate speech preparation and rehearsal, consider this: If your speech runs 20 minutes and you’re giving it to 300 people – that’s 100 hours of human existence being placed in your care. It’s a considerable responsibility. Even people who have time to kill don’t want to see it done with a blunt weapon.

Robert Orben, The Speechwriter’s Book of Humour

New DVD Service

From today I'm offering an extra service with my speechwriting. For just £50 extra I will supply a DVD performance of the speech.

It will be supplied on a 8cm Mini-DVD-RW disc, suitable for playing on DVD players.

Some clients feel they are unsure of how to deliver the lines, so instead of spending money on presentation training, they can get a pretty good idea of how the speech should be performed.

It will also help when it comes to memorising the script. You can watch it several times, and like watching music videos, it helps you internalise the words.

Before I send off a speech, I always read it at a lectern as a way of editing it and ensuring it flows properly.

Speech Preparation

While looking for ways to prepare for my forthcoming talk in Washington, I found this lecture on YouTube. Randy Pausch is a brilliant speaker. The performance is given added piquancy by the fact that he is suffering from cancer. The title is "Really achieving your childhood dreams": Pausch's presentation is quintessentially American.

Wedding Speeches

This article appeared in the January 2008 wedding supplement of Compass Magazine.

I am occasionally asked how I can earn a living writing speeches for people. Can’t they write their own? I answer yes they can. I provide a valuable service by telling them they can’t possibly deliver what they have written.

Wedding speeches are pivotal in the day’s proceedings. A £25,000 nuptials can be spoilt by a best man who chooses to give a lurid account of how they all got paralytic on the stag night. The tale involves pulling down the groom’s trousers and then tying him to a lamp post, followed by projectile vomiting and strippers.

The amazing thing is that the details are always the same, and the speaker considers them riotously funny. Just what people want. In fact, the audience at a wedding, which includes children and elderly people, is much the same as the one the TV schedulers target on a Sunday evening. The speech should be sincere, heat-warming, gentle, funny and kind. If the material would be too risqué for Last of the Summer Wine or Heartbeat, cut it out.

It’s not just the best man who can foul up. The father of the bride can do his bit. Imagine if you are a proud young woman and your dad stands up on the biggest day of your life and says: "I've watched my daughter grow up over the years and we’ve had a few laughs, like the time she fell in the toilet as a small child. She was really mad at me for laughing at her. I think maybe that's why it took her so long to find a man to marry."

The groom can set himself up for a lifetime of recrimination or a smart divorce if he casually picks up a toast that he thinks will bring the house down. Something like: “The vows have been read/ The cake has been cut;/ Let's hope that my bride/ Doesn’t grow a big butt!”

There seems to be two problems. A lack of judgment about what people think is funny and a failure to appreciate how hard it is to write something that will be eloquent and appropriate. Jokes which may be acceptable within the family, can sound very insensitive when aired in public.

Making an audience laugh requires a high degree of skill. I sometimes get very wealthy clients who wake up one morning and dream they would like to be Jack Dee at their daughter’s wedding. By paying me, they expect me to transform them into a top comedian. Of course I can’t do that. Public speaking is like ballroom dancing or golf, it requires regular practice to perform at a high level.

A common mistake is to use long personal anecdotes. I call them you-had-to-be-there stories. They seem amusing to the speaker, because they made him laugh. At a wedding many of the guests hardly know the characters involved. So they don’t get it.

The other cardinal sin is to go on too long. Seven minutes is the perfect length. By all means write a ten minute speech, which is about 1,300 words, but then be ruthless and cut it back to 900 words. Write very short sentences (never more than 20 words) and when you deliver your speech, speak slowly, loudly and clearly.

The most effective speech will include a few very short stories which reveal the character of the bride or groom in a familiar situation and a positive light. The story could be an example of Sarah passed her driving test at the third attempt. Or how Paul got his first job. We are always interested in how they met.

Some couples say they are not going to do speeches because they are too formal. This is a pity. A speech is a great way to mark a new beginning. Wouldn’t it be lovely to say something simple and generous which people remember twenty or thirty years after the event?

Others are overcome with fear. It is frightening to stand up in front of a big audience, but wedding guests are extremely generous and supportive. They want you to do well. You do have to do careful preparation, however. One hour for every minute of the speech is what I recommend. Make use of a tape recorder or even a video. You can never over rehearse.

Failure to do so may land you in the soup, like the hero of my favourite best man story. He was drunk but he waxed lyrical in his speech about his close emotional bond with the groom. There wasn't a dry eye in the house.

As he was winding down, he raised his champagne glass and declared: "From my heart, I wish Mark and Tina the happiest marriage of love and devotion." Problem? The bride's name was SERENA! Tina was Mark's psychotic ex-girlfriend. It’s not easy to recover from that.

How to lead people by the nose

The best book I read last year was Robert B. Cialdini's The Psychology of Influence.

The book is fun because it analyses the many ways that we are conned through advertising and other media. Cialdini confesses to being a bit of a sucker himself, and says the point of the book is that when you know the techniques you can inoculate yourself against them.

He opens with a story about a mother turkey. Turkey mothers are good mothers, loving and protective. They spend much of their time tending and cleaning their young, but virtually all this behaviour is triggered by the 'cheep, cheep' sound of the young turkey chicks. If the chick makes the 'cheep, cheep' noise the mother will take care of it, otherwise it will ignore it or sometimes kill it.

If you create a model polecat (the natural enemy of turkeys) and attach a recorder that will play 'cheep, cheep', the turkey will happily nurture the model polecat. It's all about triggers, the click whirr of automatic reactions.

Because we lead such busy lives, we want to make snap decisions. We use social proof, or other indicators to help us make decisions. But some of those choices can be as silly as the turkey's.

Joe Girard was one of America's top salesmen. He consistently sold more cars than all his competitors. How did he do it? Every month he identified a holiday, and every month he would send a card to his 13,000 customers marking this holiday, with three words on it, "I like you". Now surely people wouldn't fall for this pathetic blandishment. Yes they do.

We're phenomenal suckers for flattery. And Cialdini points out that even if we know someone is not telling the whole truth about us, we love it all the same.

The book is full of great examples of how we change our thinking and how organisations and people can manipulate us. It's a treasury of good stories for speeches.