10 Useful Tips for the Stunning Speech Writing

Those who know the mastery of oratory, can change the world. But this does not always mean that you need to speak well despite the word oratory standing for the public speaking. Sometimes, it means that you should also write strongly, and, to some extent, this is even more difficult than speaking. The matter is that when you speak, you have the power to influence people with your tone, with intonations, and with gestures. Moreover, eye contact makes you closer to the audience, and you can make a bigger impact on people. With speech writing, you have only words and paragraphs, and this is your only tool to reach your reader.

Is it possible to write a stunning speech if you are not a professional speech writer? Of course, it is. You just need to understand the workflow and the aspects to which you need to pay precise attention. In this article, we have collected 10 tips that will make you write better than the speech writers of famous politicians.

1. Mind the length

Sometimes, you think that the more you write, the more influence on your audience you will have. But in reality, you don’t have to write a lot to be influential. On the contrary, the most influential written speeches are short and informative. You may think that written speech can be long as your reader can always return to the previous page to clarify the details or remind themselves what you were talking about previously. However, no one does that. If the attention is lost, your speech is no longer effective. It is always better to capture the full attention of a reader for 5 minutes, than get 10 minutes of diffused attention when a reader does not catch the point of your speech. Make it shorter to be more influential.

2. Read it and listen to it

Your speech is written only to be read by someone, so you should always read it aloud. This is perhaps the most effective way to find the weak points in your speech, notice mistakes, repeated phrases and words, and loss of coherence. The best way to implement this method is to read your speech to someone else. Another person can show you the week sides of the speech, and you will understand what points you need to pay more attention to, and what points you need to fix.

3. Opt for simple phrases

There is always a temptation to write in complicated and twisted phrases. Most of us think that this is the best way to look smarter and more influential. But if you listen to or read the speeches of famous politicians, you will notice that the sentences are short, the phrase structures are simple, and the words are easily understandable by all. Do not go for complexity, choose simplicity.

4. Do research before you start to write

One of the most common mistakes that you can possibly make when writing a speech is to do it without a preliminary research. Speech writing is a process that always requires investigation. If you cannot perform it properly, your speech becomes uninformative and losses the potential that could turn it into a powerful tool for capturing your reader’s attention.

5. Find the purpose

Another thing you need to determine before writing is your purpose. The purpose of writing always depends on the situation: perhaps, you write a speech to impress the board, or to demonstrate your leadership qualities, or to demonstrate your writing skill. Your speech will differ according to your purpose. In fact, the purpose will determine the style of the speech, the choice of words, and the general tone of voice for reaching the audience.

6. Know your audience

Do you know who will read your speech? If you don’t, do everything possible to find out who this person/people is/are. Speech is not an essay. Speech is intended to influence people and to reach your audience you need to know what it wants. You can always write for someone abstract, imaginary, but the results of such communication will also be vague and unclear.

7. Speak to emotions

Speech is not news or simple representation of information. Writing a speech, you should not refer to logic, but you should refer to a person’s emotions. Thus, again we speak about the necessity to determine your audience. To understand the effect of the emotions, you may compare different advertising campaigns or movies. Do you cry when you watch documentaries? No, as they refer to logic. But you definitely cried when you watched some entertainment movies as they always refer to emotions.

8. Create images

To get a stronger effect, create the images with your words. When people read your speech, they need to see scenes and pictures, not just the words compelled into sentences. Of course, to reach this effect, you need to be good with words and with understanding how to penetrate into people’s imagination using your writing.

9. Repeat your ideas to get stronger

In speeches, we need to use all available methods to reach the desired effect. Repetition of the ideas works better for that. In essays, you present your idea only once and use facts and arguments to support it. This is all about logical references. In speeches, you may repeat the ideas without explanation just to remind the readers about your point of view.

10. Always check the last line

Generally, people remember two things in a speech – the opening line and the closing line. Moreover, the closing line always has the strongest effect. Writing a speech, pay precise attention to what you tell at the end. Use the most powerful words to impress your readers.

Writing a speech can be a real challenge. But when you understand what points you need to pay your attention to, it becomes less complicated to find proper words and select the tools to reach your readers. Use these 10 tips to make speech writing less complicated and enjoy your success!