Image Credit: Caleb Roenigk
If you want to be a good speaker, then you are going to have to deliver good speeches. Good speeches start by being writing well so that we can show people the importance of public speaking. I can only speak for myself, but I’ve never had any formal training in exactly how one should go about writing a speech. I think that I do it somewhere as a cross between writing a letter and jotting down some notes to myself. This might not be the secret to creating a memorable speech! So as speakers, if we want to improve our speaking ability it sure seems as though one way to make this happen would be to get better at writing speeches. But how?
Go Where The Pros Go
I think that we’d all be happy if we were able to write our speeches to be just a little bit more like those speeches that professional speech writers create. However, in order to do this you might think that you need to go back to school and learn how to become a professional speechwriter – who has the time to that? The good news here is that the basic set of information on how to write like a professional speechwriter is freely available to you.
What you are going to need to do is to locate and start to follow professional speakers organizations. Once you start to do this you’ll discover that they offer a wealth of resources that you can use to become a better speechwriter. What you’re going to want to do is to take a look on LinkedIn for the “National Association of American Speechwriters” group, the “European Speechwriter Network”, and the “U.K. Speechwriter’s Guild”. These organizations hold conferences, publish newsletters along with member’s speeches, and often offer workshops on improving your speech writing skills.
Get Social
Welcome to the 21st Century. There is a lot of chatter out there about speech writing, you just have to know how to go about finding it. One way to do this is to sign into Twitter and search for the hashtag “#speechwriting”. This will generally show you the tweets that come from speechwriters.
Social media in all of its forms can be a great asset to you. You should be able to find articles about speech writing that will offer you insights and tips on how to write better speeches. There will also be both criticism and commentary about recent speeches (especially during election season!). These forums give you an opportunity to post your own questions about how to become a better speechwriter.
Read How To Write Better Speeches
In order to become a better speechwriter, you are going to have to do some homework. What this means for you is that you are going to have to find the time to read professional speech writing articles and lists of tips. A great place to go to get this kind of information is over at Ragan Communications (http://www.ragan.com/Speechwriting/sw.aspx) where their website has an entire section dedicated to speechwriting tips. Another resource is Vital Speeches Of The Day (http://vsotd.com/) which has a great website and a free newsletter.
Build Your Library
When we sit down to write a speech, more often than not we are all alone. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. What we need to do is to first read great books on how to write speeches, and then we need to make sure that those books are within an arm’s reach when we are actually going through the process of writing a speech. There are a number of different titles that should find their way into your library including Peggy Noonan’s “Speaking Well: How to Give a Speech With Style” and Fletcher Dean’s “10 Steps To Writing a Vital Speech”.
What All Of This Means For You
If we want to become more effective as public speakers, one of the things that we’re going to have to do is to create powerful speeches. In order to become better at speech writing, we just may need some help if we want to communicate the benefits of public speaking. A good place to go looking for some help with writing speeches is to find out where the professional speechwriters hang out.
One place where you can find them is in LinkedIn groups. If you join these groups, you’ll be able to get access to the organizations in the U.S., Europe, and the U.K. Another place to go looking for assistance is in the world of Social Media. Knowing how to find speech-writing messages and who to “follow” can be the key here. Finally, we need to take the time to read up on how to write better speeches and when we are done reading something, we need to add it to our speech writing library so that it will be available to us when we are creating a speech.
The good news about becoming a better speechwriter is that this is a skill. Like every other skill it is one that can be learned, practiced, and improved upon. If we take the time to hunt down the right sources, people who do this kind of thing for a living, then we can learn from them and by doing so we will become better at writing our own speeches!
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™
Question For You: How much time each week do you think that you should spend studying how to get better at writing speeches?
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Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!
What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
Do you speak like a girl or like a boy? It turns out that how you speak may have very little to do with the gender selection that you received at birth. Way back in the past, people tended to think that everyone pretty much spoke the same way. Over time people started to understand that there were speaking differences between the way that men and women expressed the importance of public speaking. Many people felt that women’s communications patterns can affirm their subordinate role in society while men have more of a take charge speaking style. Are we bound to one way of speaking based on our gender?