HOW HARD IS IT TO WRITE A SPEECH, ANYWAY?

Does this ever happen to you?

You need to write a speech for an important occasion, but you suddenly realize that organizing your thoughts into a coherent message that the audience will appreciate is just too hard. You know what you want to talk about. You want to be appealing, persuasive, smart and funny. But you haven’t a clue how to begin.

Actually, you know more than you think you do. Writing a speech is a skill you've been learning since you first went to school, even if you never took a speech class.

From the time you wrote your first book report or short essay on "How I spent my summer vacation" in elementary school, you've been putting down your thoughts in an organized, coherent way. Whatever the assignment, you learned a formula with a beginning, a middle and an end.  It’s a skill that served you all through your schooling. So why can't you use it now that you're an adult when you're asked to write a speech?

      Try these few suggestions to get rid of your reluctance and make creation a lot easier. Every speech has a few basic elements in common.  You just need to be aware of them.     

  First, who will be in the audience? What are they expecting to learn from you? Are they there because they want to be or because they have to be? Do they already know something about your subject or is this totally new information? Are they expecting a formal, hi-tech presentation or an informal talk without even a microphone? Will it be a roomful of strangers or a gathering of family and friends?

How many minutes will you actually speak? Is your subject highly technical or are you giving your own point of view about something others are familiar with? What is the premise and purpose of your talk? Are you going to educate, inform, persuade or entertain the entire group?  Or maybe your job is to honor an individual or the bridal couple.

      Next, what are the three most important items the audience must hear in order to understand your premise? Use these as your outline.  What evidence do you need to support each one? Do you have it at your fingertips or do you need to do a bit of research? Can you paint word pictures of your points with stories, analogies, metaphors, or humor? Will you go narrow and deep and tell the audience enough about your three items that they'll feel they understand them thoroughly?

Will you end up with a rousing finish that recaps your key points and tells the audience what action you want them to take next? Will you have time for a Q&A? Are you prepared to answer questions from the audience, even challenging ones? At the very end, will you have proven the premise you started with? Will the audience feel they know something when they leave that they didn't know when they came in?          

      That's all there is to it. These questions are a roadmap to guide you through the writing process. They’ll give you the knowledge you need to write your speech, so the writing will be a lot easier than you'd thought. The feeling of overwhelm or insecurity about what you want to say will disappear. You'll find that the words you need will come to you trippingly on the tongue, just like Will Shakespeare said.

Next time you're asked to give a speech, you'll smile like the Cheshire Cat and reply, "Sure! When, where, and how many minutes?" And then get out your roadmap and start writing!