Getting it on paper


The moment you take the microphone, you are competing with every communications vehicle vying for mindshare in this information-obsessed culture.

My days in documentary television drove home this hard reality, show after show. Viewers bring the same high expectations, the same demand for cutting-edge "infotainment," to everything they see.

Which is exactly as it should be. After all, we are competing for the most sought-after and fleeting commodity they control. Their attention.

That means every line you utter has to be crafted to go head-to-head with the best that TV, print, the Internet and all the other heavyweight media contenders have to offer.

Here's how:
  • Work from a one-page outline. Always get it down in words. The mental discipline of sketching out your presentation and visualizing it as single-word themes will be invaluable later on.
  • Match length to viewing standards your audience knows. Generally, that translates into 18-22 minutes (the length of a television half-hour) for a keynote address, 12-15 minutes for an in-house motivator, 5-7 minutes for a ceremonial speech, and 2-3 minutes for a news conference. Think that's not enough time? Here's another curious fact: The more you say, the less people remember.
  • Navigate using audience-familiar milestones. We've all sat through enough winding, freeform presentations to see the value in order. Know where you're going. And share the route with your listeners:
  1. Teaser. Grab their attention, then lay out your game plan.
  2. Introduction. Connect with your listeners. Set the stage for their full buy-in.
  3. Body. Illustrate your strategic message. Keep it logical, and the pace brisk.
  4. Tag. Tell them what you told them and leave them straining for more.
  • Write for the ear. There is a huge stylistic gulf between materials written for the page and those created to be spoken. In fact, they call for almost mutually exclusive skill sets. Finding writers whose script work is equal to their efforts in print is as difficult as finding natively English speakers who also communicate in unaccented French. Different rhythms entirely.

And finally: use the speaker's voice. I was reminded of this maxim, painfully, not too long ago. A popular government official was organizing a series of meetings with business leaders. His public affairs group hired me to pen opening remarks and a longer luncheon address.

I was pleased with the first drafts, as were they. So it came as a rude shock when, days before the event, the big speech came back with this note: This is JFK style. I'm not JFK. Rewrite it in my voice or find somebody who can.

I fumed for a good ten minutes before it hit me: this politician knew himself better than anyone gave him credit for.

I restructured, reworded. The speech was a hit.

The moral? For a speech to really work, the speaker has to own every nuance. In the view of another master politician, Winston Churchill: "Short words are best, and old words, when short, are best of all."

Speaker’s Notebook: A Guide to Savvy Speechwriting