Writing a Speech: Recommandations

00:00 Some of you are not going to like this advice.

00:02 You professional speechwriters are not going to like this.

00:05 But here's my recommendation.

00:07 If you actually have to give a speech and my advice is, do not write a speech out word for word.

00:15 It's different if you're a professional keynote speaker, and you're being paid 50,000. It's different if you are a president of a country and people are going to be analyzing and transcribing every single word.

00:28 I'm speaking here primarily to adults who are speaking in business, civic occasions, and here's why I say don't write it out. It's really hard.

00:39 It's time-consuming.

00:41 If you write it all out, and you get a little bit nervous, there's this tendency to start reading.

00:47 And what reads well doesn't necessarily sound good to the ear.

00:52 My recommendation is come up with bullet points, come up with a list of your top five ideas, your main ideas, and have a sentence fragment three or four or five words to remind you of what the concept is.

01:09 If there are a couple of facts, statistics you need listed under that, and then a few words to tell you the story associated with that. And to work from notes and outline.

01:22 It's much, much more effective for most people most of the time.

01:27 I'm not trying to give something that's a solution for everyone 100% of the time.

01:32 But if you have to give any sort of business presentation, political speech, anything that is not in the academic world, and you're not a president of a country and the whole media world is looking at you, then I would recommend Don't write out the whole speech.

01:51 Come up with ideas.

01:53 Work from a single sheet of notes, and then practice on video.

01:57 Far more important than writing the speech out.

01:59 Perfectly, word for word.