How To Write Speeches For Important People

Writing a speech for someone else can be very difficult to do
Writing a speech for someone else can be very difficult to do
Image Credit: Patrick Denker

As speakers, we spend a lot of time thinking about how we can do a better job the next time that we deliver a speech. We worry about how our voice sounds, what we’re doing with our hands, and if the people in the back of the room can hear us. However, this all gets changed when we find ourselves in a position where we’re not going to be presenting a speech, but we will be writing it. Just exactly how you do go about writing a speech for someone else who might be more important than you are?

How Do You Create A Speech For Someone Else To Give?

if you are going to try to answer the question of just exactly how you can go about creating a speech for someone else to deliver, then you are going to first have to answer a few questions. The first of this is that you are going to have to take the time to understand what the speaker is going to want to say. Once you have a handle on this, your next step is going to be to turn these thoughts into a speech that an audience is going to want to hear.

What you are going to want to do is to find a way to allow the speaker to share his or her ideas and their personality with their audience. The ultimate goal is to both engage and persuade the audience. In order to make this happen, you as the speechwriter are going to have to find a way to build a bridge that extends between the speaker and their audience.

One of the most difficult parts of writing a speech for someone else to give is that you want to be able to capture “their voice” and make the speech sound like they talk. In order to be able to determine what “their voice” sounds like, you’ll need to listen to the speaker talk without using a script. You want to be able to detect what their style is. You’ll be searching to determine if they like to use a lot of statistics or if they are more prone to using stories to get their points across.

The Challenges That Come Along With Writing A Speech For Someone Else

Writing a speech for you to give is not an easy thing to do. Writing a speech for someone else to give is even harder. One of the first challenges that you’ll run into when you agree to write a speech for someone is that this is something that you are not going to be able to do by yourself. Instead, you are going to need to have access to and time from the person that you’ll be writing the speech for. The more important this person is, the harder you will find it to be to get access to them for any meaningful length of time.

The next big challenge that you’ll run into is the non-stop number of revisions to your speech that you’ll be receiving. If you really are creating a speech for an important person, then you can pretty much be guaranteed that there will be multiple people who will want to make changes to your speech. This means that you are going to have to put up with multiple sources of edits, revisions, and changes to your speech. Where things can get a bit tricky is when two reviewers don’t agree with the direction that the speech should be going. If you are not careful, you can find yourself stuck in the middle of a battle of revisions.

It turns out that putting up with all of these challenges can turn out to be a very good thing for your customer. Often when you start to create a speech, the intended speaker may not be clear in just exactly where they stand on one or more points that are related to this speech. Based on the time that you spend with them and then all of the revisions that are made to your original speech, things will start to become very clear for everyone involved very quickly. Once you’ve been able to create a speech that everyone can live with, the message that they really want to communicate will have become clear to everyone involved.

What All Of This Means For You

In order to have an impact on an audience, you first have to be able to create a speech that will connect with them. This is a difficult thing to do under the best of circumstances and it turns out that it’s even harder to do when you have agreed to create a speech for someone else to give. When you sign up to do this, you’re going to have to understand how the process works if you want the speech that you create to be a success.

The speech that you create for someone else is designed to allow them to share their thoughts and their ideas with their audience. In order to make this happen, you’re going to have to do some homework and determine just exactly what “their voice” is. Creating a speech for an important person can be a difficult thing to do for a number of different reasons. The first is that their time is valuable and you may have difficulty getting the time from them that you need in order to write their speech. Additionally, important people often have a lot of support staff and you may find yourself dealing with a lot of revisions to your speech from different sources.

Although writing a speech for someone else is not an easy thing to do, it is a good skill for all of us to develop. If we can take the time to understand what someone else wants to tell their audience, then the process should help us to become better speechwriters. This can only be a good thing the next time that we go to write a speech for ourselves!

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: How much time do you think that you should reserve in order to write a speech for someone else?

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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

When it comes time to write your next speech, will you be trying to copy anyone’s style? I think in most cases the answer is no. We’re just trying to write the best speech that we can. However, because so many other people have written so many great speeches, maybe we should take the time to pick someone who’s style impresses us and whom we’d like to emulate. Now the big question is who? I would like to make a recommendation: Abe Lincoln.