Speech Writer

In short A speech is written for the ear, and that changes almost everything about how it is built: short sentences, concrete words, and one idea per sentence, because a listener cannot go back and reread. It needs an opening that earns attention in the first fifteen seconds, a body with no more than three points, one story that does the emotional work, and a close that lands rather than trails off. Timing is arithmetic — roughly 110 to 140 words a minute delivered, so a five-minute speech is about 600 to 700 words, and almost everyone writes double. The thing that makes a speech work is not structure though, it is specificity. A wedding speech built from general sentiment about love lands flat; the same speech with one real memory, told with the actual details, does not. The details you put in are what the audience remembers, so put in more than feels necessary — the specific place, the actual thing that was said, the real name. Then read it aloud, standing, with a timer, because a speech that reads well on paper is not the same as one that says well.