DIY Speechwriting – Being your own speech writer

DIY Speechwriting – Being your own speech writer

OK so you have to give a speech. This is actually a great opportunity although you may be normal and feel terrified. Whether you are giving a Best Man’s speech, a speech at work or in a social setting at your club or at a family event, your speech will be either good/fantastic, awful or just plain dull. Most speeches people give are dull and awful and forgettable. And too long.

So when I say giving a speech is a great opportunity – it is. Giving a speech is a great opportunity to be fantastic and memorable and spoken about – in a good way – or it is a great opportunity to crash and burn and be memorable and be spoken about. In a not so good way.

So just imagine, you don’t have the time or you don’t want to spend the money on a professional speech writer. Let us also imagine that you have no speechwriting experience – why should you – you probably have a real job!

Here is a short checklist to help you write your own speech which I hope will be helpful.

1. What are you you doing speaking in the first place? What do you want to transport from your head via your words to their head through their ears?
2. Who is your audience? What are they expecting? What are they hoping for?
3. Summarise your speech in a sentence in your head. What is your big idea – the thing you want them to remember tomorrow?  What are two supplementary ideas? They won’t remember more than three anyway so focus on those three.
4. Get their attention before you give them the meat of the speech.  If you don’t get their attention at the beginning they are not going to suddenly “get into it”.
5. Speak like a human – use short sentences. And short words.
6. Be interesting – tell real and personal stories.
7. Be careful of jokes. Seriously.
8. End with a “takeaway”.
9. Be brief – say what you have to say and then shut up and go. Most people speak at 200 words a minute. That is 4000 words for 20 minutes. Seriously – do you have that much to say? 10 minutes is more than enough.
10. Practice, practice, practice delivering your speech. No one is a born public speaker. Do some work.

Peter Botting

London-based Peter Botting is a top globally-operating executive coach for CEOs and senior leaders. He has thirty plus years' experience in public speaking coaching and storytelling coaching in the UK, USA and EMEA, working with over 8,500 speakers, companies like IBM and Accenture, and almost 200 Members of Parliament.

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