Tips for Speech Writing

Important tips for students writing a speech

1. Choosing your topic

2. Researching your topic

3. Thinking about any personal connection or story

4. Planning how you will organise everything in your speech

5. Writing your speech

6. Editing your speech to make it even better

7. Final touches

1. Choosing your topic

Choosing a speech topic can be a challenging process at first! Often you can be concerned that people might find your idea boring, or even that
too many other students will talk about the same thing as you in their speeches. The truth is, that there are so many ideas in the world, as well as different ways to approach them, that you should be able to find a fresh way that suits you without too much trouble. Your first priority should be to choose something that you feel comfortable exploring and interested in writing about!

Before choosing your topic ask yourself questions like:

• What really interests me about the world around me?

• Is there anything I especially care about in history, current affairs or popular culture?

• Do I have any special knowledge or connection with any of these things?

• Is there anything different or fresh I could say about any of them?

You should also remember to talk to your teachers and family to see if they have ideas to help or guide this process. In the event that you are choosing from a topic off a list of suggestions, it can be useful to remember that choosing a topic that is different or challenging can help make your speech stand out from the crowd!

2. Researching your topic

Researching should be one of the most exciting parts of preparing for a speech. Here are some general rules to follow.

• You should write down any interesting information, facts and quotes from people who are involved in the topic (and these can be ordinary people, not just famous ones).

• Search the internet and keep a proper record of any useful websites or sources so you can find them again. Don’t forget other sources such as books and interviews.

• Don’t forget to look for information from different spheres to inform your research process—your local community, around the country, as well as from around the world.

• Keep everything you learn together in a file saved where you can find it again easily—you’ll need to access and use the information when you start writing the speech.

3. Thinking about any personal connection or story

So now you should have two things organised:

• An area that you’d like to speak about or generally feel passionate about.

• A collection of information about that area that you’d like to put into that speech.

One of the great things about public speaking is that it encourages a speaker to include something of themselves into the process. For speechwriters who are just starting out, this means that you can know that there’s room to use some kind of personal evidence, a connection or personal story as part of your speech.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to have experienced all of the things in your topic area personally—in fact, sometimes it can be detrimental if that is the case, as too many stories or pieces of personal evidence in a speech can tend to sound like a recount of events, rather than an interesting journey for the audience.

We would encourage you to talk to your family or friends, as they may have some interesting connection with, or views on, your topic. The careful use of stories and personal examples in a speech can help you make your speech more real for you and therefore for your audience. Remember, though, that just because it’s your story doesn’t automatically make it interesting to everyone else. You need to select which parts are worth sharing and which parts aren’t! There should always be a balance between your personal evidence, and examples that could be applied to all audience members. A great way to check this is to make sure that you haven’t used too many personal pronouns such as ‘I’ or ‘my’.

4. Planning how you will organise everything in your speech

Once you have everything you want to include in your speech, you need to think about the best way to organise it. The key questions now will include:

• What should come first?

• How will you finish?

• What feelings do you want to convey to the audience during the speech and when would you like them to respond that way?

• What would you like your audience to understand or appreciate more after you have concluded your speech?

We highly recommend writing a dot-point plan to help you navigate your way through these questions. Your plan can even reference the examples that you want to place in certain areas of the speech. A dot-point plan or ‘speech map’ might look something like:

Speech title—The Big Blue Chair

Introduction

1. Talk about the invention of chairs.
— Include funny quote about chairs.

2. Speak about your family history with chairs.
— Include quote from mum about her old lounge—the ‘big blue’ chair.

3. Recall your story about sitting on the chair with your grandparents sharing stories.

Development

1. Speak about the importance of communicating family stories through generations.
— Quote from your grandparents about their experiences 50 years ago.
— Describe a ‘regular family day’ back then and compare it to your current day.
— Show the differences in terms of technology and communication.
— Make a point about the value of strong communication and family.
— Link to a broader vision of the world, look at families that are potentially without the ability to share on the big blue chair.

Conclusion

1. What would the inventor of the chair think?
— Reference funny quote about chair and add something extra to compare
— Speak about your personal feelings about communication and its decline.
2. Conclude with message of advice.

You can see from this type of map that you can now fill in the gaps and spend some time writing your speech without worrying that you will lose track of your overall theme.
As some general rules for your speech map, you should try to include:

• An engaging beginning or introduction. Don’t start with whatever first

• comes into your head. Find a fresh approach that will capture every

• one’s attention and show that you’re thinking for yourself.

• A middle with information or arguments that explain your point of

• view. This is your chance to use some of the interesting evidence or

• facts that you’ve collected to add to your ideas.

• A conclusion that sums up what you feel in an engaging manner. It

• should bring everything in your speech together and leave your audience with an understanding of your ideas to take away with them.

5. Writing your speech

Now it’s time to write a draft of your full speech.

Writing the whole thing at once can be a little daunting at first, and if that is the case, you should use your speech map as a guide so that you can make sure that you are not spending too much time worrying about how the pieces will fit together.

• Remember that you don’t have to start your writing at the beginning of the speech. With a speech map, you should be able
  to pick any point at the speech and start a draft! For example, you might have a better idea of how you want to write your middle (development) of your speech or your conclusion (because you feel strongly about the ideas that you want your audience to take away from the speech) then you should start there—it’s your speech after all! Sometimes this style of writing can also help you draw better conclusions and links to create an even more engaging speech.

• Once you do start writing, just remember to try to link the parts of your speech together as much as possible. The more connections that you make between your points will mean that you’ll come to an even stronger conclusion.

Finally, you should always think about the words you write to make sure that your message is consistent and that your audience is engaged as much as possible.You can use persuasive and descriptive language to help drive points home to the audience and make what you say really count. In choosing your emotive language, you should always use words that express the emotion that you are trying to convey. Audiences will sense if you are genuine about your message and because you’ll be saying your speech out loud, your tone of voice will add to the effect.

As a word of warning, though, it is sometimes tempting to use big words or words that you don’t really understand. Actually, this is one of the least effective ways to engage with an audience. Remember that ‘I have a dream’ is a simple, yet powerful statement that has stayed with generations not because it was fancy, but because it was genuine and emotive.

6. Editing your speech to make it even better

Once you’ve written a first draft of your speech you should share it with your teacher— they will always have ideas to help you make it better. Try and take this advice and apply it—no-one gets their work perfectly right at the first try, and learning to improve your speech, make it clearer and more interesting, is really important.

When you’re revising your speech to make sure everything is working well, remember that there are probably going to be many different speeches that are being presented, particularly if you are at a competition or event, and you’ll want your speech to be one of the standouts. The best way to achieve this isn’t through your presentation, but rather through your approach to the content in the speech (clear, effective presentation is always encouraged however!) A great way to evaluate your speech is to look back over your research and your speech map and ask yourself again:

• Why you found the topic interesting enough to write about.

• What you think other people will find interesting about it.

Next you should check that your messages are clear and consistent throughout the speech. This is even more important than working on your examples or worrying about standing out. Remember that your speech has a purpose and that you spent time creating it to try to impart some kind of message to the audience. Try to read your speech with ‘fresh eyes’ and think—‘Will the audience be on the same page as I am at the end of the speech?’ Another way to test this is to test your speech on someone that hasn’t heard it yet and ask them for their opinion on what they think it means!

Finally, in checking the timing of your speech, most situations where you’ll speak, your name and topic are announced before you speak, so you can focus on using all your time to engage the audience and impart your message.

7. Finishing Touches

Once you’ve finished your editing process, it’s time to make sure that the final touches are put on your speech preparation. Many of these pieces of advice are very simple, but they are also very important to get right so that you feel confident when you go to deliver your speech.

Here are some steps that we suggest that you follow:

• Format your document into columns so that it will print at a size that can be cut up into cards that will fit comfortably in your palm. Also leave breaks in the writing that are as natural for speaking as possible (you don’t want to have to change cards in the middle of a sentence!). You can then use the breaks as guides for cutting the palm cards.

• Make sure the cards are numbered, all in the same corner (so you can quickly reorder them if you drop them or accidentally move two at once).

• Print at least two copies of your speech and put them in zip-lock bags for safe keeping. Having a spare with you is wise in case of emergency—spilling water on a speech has happened many times before!