Speech Writing Made Easy

To be honest with you, this was always my biggest fear. Not having enough content. Not knowing what to write for my speech. Just standing in front of a crowd and blabbering on.

If you find yourself stuck for content, stop and walk away from the speech for awhile. Take a walk. Listen to some music. I once heard a presentation by someone from my Toastmasters club on how to Write Speeches to Music. An excellent idea.

Getting up in front of an audience was enough to raise my anxiety level. But the thought of not having good subject matter scared me even more.

I think almost everyone thinks, deep down inside, that someday they may be found out. Someone will find out that we don’t know everything we say we do. The funny thing is we probably do, but our minds like to play games with us.

The fact is you will know what you’re speaking about. If you don’t then I recommend you choose another topic.

If you are speaking about your experiences, feelings or thoughts then your speech material is perfect. Nobody knows about you better than you do.

Still, once you have your topic picked, there are some steps to follow to simplify your speech writing. Follow these steps and writing will be much easier.

Speech Writing Steps

1. Pick your topic. Check out Public Speaking Topics for more ideas.

2. Determine how much time you will have.

3. What's in if for them? Your audience will be thinking “What’s in it for me?” So think about your audience and let that shape the tone of the speech. Ask yourself who is in the audience? What do they expect? Do they want a humourous speech, serious or motivational speech?

4. Make an outline. The secret here is structure. You want to bring together your ideas in a way that will help you to meet your purpose for the speech. I generally use 5 ways to organize when speech writing.

• Chronological. (Arranged by time.)
• Spatial Order. (A physical or geographical layout.)
• Problem-Solution Order. (cause/ effect.)
• Motivated Sequence. (Problem then solution.)
• Topical Order. (A cornucopia of ideas relating to main topic.)

5. Create your introduction. You need to catch the audience’s attention. Use attention grabbers.

6. Organize your information into three to seven main points.

7. Prioritize your main points and remove those that don’t fit.

8. Support each point with facts, examples, statistics, etc.

9. Write your conclusion.

10. Practice, practice, practice. Use the Memory Chunking technique to help you to memorize your speech.

Remember to be yourself and write about what you are passionate about.

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