Good Writing Remains At The Heart Of Good Speech Making

Just because you are a good speaker doesn’t mean you are a good speech writer. The advent of PowerPoint software has made the fully scripted paragraph an endangered species, replacing it with bulleted lists, catchy headlines and whiz-bang special effects. But good writing remains at the heart of good speech making, particularly when the intent is to inspire or motivate audiences. If you’re among the fortunate few, you may have staff speechwriters or communications experts to help you craft that spellbinding speech. But most of us aren’t that lucky, which means having to face down the terror of the blank computer screen on our own. 
So what’s the key to writing a memorable speech that doesn’t lean heavily on PowerPoint for speaker support? We talked to some of the best speechwriters in the business – who between them have written speeches for U.S. presidents, cabinet members and CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies – about what it takes to write a speech that is music to the audience’s ears. 


The Research Process 
One thing these pros agree on is this: A speech is only as good as the quality of research and reflection put into it. To that end, Ken Askew, a freelance speechwriter who has written speeches for luminaries like President George H. W. Bush and Lee Iacocca, is constantly on the prowl for ideas to use in speeches, whether his writing assignment is next week or next year. 

Askew’s low-tech idea file consists of a large box into which he throws notes jotted on napkins, offbeat news stories emblematic of broader trends, intriguing studies or statistics and clever advertisements. This work usually pays off handsomely down the road. For example, he stumbled across a statistic mentioning the highway with the lowest average speed in the world: the Autobahn in Germany, which most would associate with having the fastest speed. Although people sometimes drive at speeds exceeding 150 mph, when there is an accident on the Autobahn – of which there are many – traffic is backed up and idling for hours, making for the lowest average speed. 

“I tore that out and threw it in a box, thinking I might be able to use it down the road for a speech on the necessity of regulation,” Askew says. “Good speechwriters need to be idea sponges. You can’t be too critical when you spot something interesting. If it hooks your imagination, there’s a reason for it, and who knows how you might be able to apply it in the future.” 

Hal Gordon, a former speechwriter for Colin Powell and the Reagan White House, is of the same mind regarding research. “Always collect more information than you can possibly use,” Gordon says. “It’s far better to have a mass of information and try to boil it down to 30 minutes than to not have enough and figure out how to pad the speech. If you have more information than you can use, then it follows that you are selecting the very best of that material.” 

Culling only the best data, anecdotes or humor – using only one sparkling example to support a point when you’re tempted to use two, for example – is a key to brevity, the hallmark of good speeches. “Have you ever heard a speech that was too short?” asks Jane Tully, president of New York-based Tully Communications, an executive speechwriting company, in an article written for her web site. “I doubt it. But we’ve all squirmed through presentations that droned on well beyond the allotted time – and our most vivid memories of those occasions have little to do with the speaker’s message.” 

If you want audiences to stay on the edge of their seats, says Tully, take a hint from mystery writer Elmore Leonard, known for his spare but gripping prose. How does he do it? According to Leonard, “I leave out the parts people skip.”