To write a speech, write a phrase.
/Your audience won’t remember your speech, but they’ll leave with your thought.
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Some years ago, my wonderful young editor and publicist at Penguin UK managed to slot me into a lavish event that the publisher held in the London Palladium. Genuine bigshot authors were there: Tara Westover with her huge bestseller, Educated. Monty Python’s Michael Palin. Michelle Obama gave a speech. Two thousand publishing executives packed the theater, and thousands more around the world watched remotely.
Given just five or so minutes to provide the audience with some comic relief, I wrote a short speech and the event staff loaded it into the Teleprompter. Twenty minutes before my cue, I was standing backstage trying to breathe when it occurred to me that this British audience wouldn’t think my bit was funny.
I begged an organizer to let me rewrite my talk on the Teleprompter. It turned out to be an ancient machine, just behind the curtain, whose keys weren’t organized in the QWERTY style. I was frantically trying to write with two fingers when a tall man sidled up to me. I recognized tall, goodlooking Lee Child of Jack Reacher fame.
“Whatcha doing?” he asked.
If only I had written the right speech before that, I could have had a lovely chat with the man and gotten a tip on how to become a mega-bestselling author. Instead, I mumbled something about rewriting on this damn contraption. Child smiled and nodded while looking over my shoulder. This did not make me calmer.
You can see the result here.
God I hate to watch that video. I mumble my beginning and never stop looking terrified. This literary audience would be key to selling my book, How to Argue with a Cat. I had rewritten my speech because I suddenly remembered that the best way to get a British audience to laugh was to make it uncomfortable. Brits, bless their repressed hearts, love awkwardness; so, I boiled my bit down to two commands:
1. Make them purr.
2. Tell them to lick each other.
Dangerous as this approach was, I wanted the commands to illustrate an important element of decorum, the rhetorical art of making an audience think you belong to their tribe. Cats with their limited vocabulary do this brilliantly. And while I doubt anyone actually applied their tongue to a colleague’s neck, I definitely could hear them purr. And laugh, even.
Speech coaches tell you to relieve performance anxiety by focusing on the friendly faces in the audience, the ones who smile. But when I’m told to look for friendly faces, I can’t help seeking out the frowners and scowlers. The feeling is exactly that of a timid rock climber who looks down.
Fortunately, I have a trick, a kind of talisman, to get me through even the worst moments of terror. Actually, two tricks. Both of them rely on writing an extremely short passage that anchors the entire speech.
I wrote about one of them, the period, in a previous post. Draft 40 perfect words, practice delivering that passage aloud a million times, and then write the rest of the speech to build up to it, turning those 40 words into a killer peroration.
I used an even simpler method in my London speech. Focus on a sentence or just a single phrase that sticks in people’s heads like a conceptual earworm.
1. Zero in on one trope or command (“Purr”).
2. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Repetition is key. To research my upcoming book on self-persuasion, I performed a yearlong rhetorical experiment to see if I could manipulate myself with the same tools that marketers and politicians use to manipulate mass audiences. I found that the tools that worked best were the figures, tropes, and commands I could repeat the most easily. Repetition creates reality.
This helps explain why people addicted to doomscrolling have such a bizarre view of the world.
Back to your speech: Your most memorable words, just several of them, will serve as the takeaway. While few people remember Winston Churchill's 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri, everyone knows its central phrase, “iron curtain.” It became the metaphor for the Cold War.
So, rather than worrying about delivering a perfect talk, I concentrate on delivering a perfect phrase or sentence. A few well-delivered words can make a whole speech work.
Let's sketch out a speech and see how we do. (I adapted this from my book, Word Hero.)
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THE "KIDS THESE DAYS" SPEECH
Congratulations, I think. Your old high school has bestowed the honor of delivering the commencement address at the June graduation. Seriously, what's better than trying to make yourself heard above a horde of celebrating students packed into a high school gym? You're an alien to them—an alien whose every word delays the moment when they can shuck their robes and mortarboards and party with their friends.
Feeling stoked?
Obviously, our first task is to find a theme. A commencement address is a blank slate, assuming you don't plan to rely on the old "follow your dream" bit.
Let’s start by finding a way to flatter your young audience. How about telling them that the naysayers are wrong about their generation? Then let’s come up with a figure of speech, a repeatable expression that will bring the kids out of their seats.
We get out a notebook and scribble some phrases or sentences.
The critics are wrong.
Kids are no better or worse than before.
You have to prove yourself.
Don't let them stop you.
Just from those lines I see a couple of juicy words that might make a good repetition: "wrong" and "prove." "Wrong" is a great word to say loudly, because it's very sound-symbolic; "wrong" rhymes with "strong," sounding powerful. "Prove" is something an ambitious young person wants to do with herself. Can we use both words in a sentence? Sure we can.
YOU: Prove them wrong.
Love it. Here's the anchor for your whole speech: the old farts say kids these days are ruining civilization. Prove them wrong. That could be the title of your speech, in fact. And the phrase can inform your outline. Start by saying how honored you are to speak to the generation who will run things someday. Then talk about the world they'll be inheriting.
Jon Stewart did this very thing in a famous 2004 speech to graduates of his alma mater, William & Mary. After talking about the real world, he tossed them a metaphor, making our planet sound like an expensive gadget.
STEWART: I don't really know to put this, so I'll be blunt. We broke it. Please don't be mad.
Metaphors work well in speeches because they allow you to talk about big, complicated, abstract things as if they were concrete. Environmentalists do this with Planet Earth, turning it into a mother, a spaceship, or a fragile organism. Conservatives do it with the economy, making it into a machine or a miracle from God. Liberals do it with cities, pretending they're villages or families. Nearly every speaker these days, unfortunately, turns life into tourism by calling it a "journey." (A word of advice: don't make life a journey. It has been used often enough to qualify as a road-weary cliché.)
Once you describe the world the graduates will inherit someday, you can talk briefly about how different their lives have been from those of their elders: born with the Internet, able to write with their thumbs on tiny keyboards, and so on.
You have come to the fulcrum, a climactic moment that tips the balance of your thoughts. Your speech has openly agreed with the adult’s perspective on kids; now tilt things. Say that many adults think kids these days haven't been brought up right—that they don't have the right stuff to grow into leaders. Then ask your young audience: "Are they right?"
Some kids or even adults may shout, "NO!" Whether they do or not, you can add, "I don't know if they're right or wrong." Pause. "That's up to you."
You glance down at a simple list of words:
VIDEO GAMES
CODDLED
SPOILED
LACK DISCIPLINE
LAZY
SELFISH
Time for your key phrase. Gazing at the graduates, you fire away.
YOU: They say that video games are ruining your ability to think. Are they right? Prove them wrong. They say your parents coddled you, they worried too much about your self-esteem. Are these critics right? Prove them wrong. They say you're spoiled, given everything, don't know how to work hard. Are they right? Prove them wrong! They say you're selfish, self-centered, that you'll grow up thinking only of yourself and not of your community or your country. Are they right? Prove them wrong!
When you this sort of phrase in front of a sizable audience, consider using a different tone for each one. In this case, you can gradually turn up the volume on "prove them wrong" until you're practically shouting that last line. Or even better, pronounce that last sentence slowly.
YOU: Prove ... them ... wrong!
Having delivered your figurative payload, giving the graduates something they will remember, let it sink in. Look studiously down at your notes and try not to smile.
When the applause dies down, you ask: "How can you prove them wrong?" Ideally, you’ve drafted a list of simple phrases for this part.
Commit to learn
Stay fit
Volunteer and vote
Learn to lead
YOU: Prove them wrong by committing to learn. Learn all you can—not just on the Web but through good books. Prove them wrong by staying fit and eating right. Prove them wrong by volunteering in your community, serving your country, and voting in every single election. And prove them wrong by learning what it takes to lead!
Yeah, some of that sounds a bit clichéd. Next thing you know you'll be talking about your journey. But I hope you found the process helpful. Start with a phrase or sentence. Write detailed notes for when you need them, and simple lists for when you don't. Make your audience feel like participants.
Remember, what seems like a crushingly dull repetition on paper can sound positively thrilling in person. Back in my magazine days, I sat through many terrific speeches thinking I should publish that. But when I read the text, I realized you had to have been there. Commands and tropes can turn your audience into warriors or saints while dialing up the emotion in the room. They can even make you seem eloquent.
A key phrase can also help you create a killer ending. Let's finish the commencement address.
YOU: Prove them wrong, and you, you—you will become the Greatest Generation.
The crowd goes wild! I mean the part of the crowd that's not scrolling Tik Tok. Or maybe those bowed heads mean they're immortalizing your words on Bluesky.
EXERCISE
Create the core of your own imaginary commencement address, the words you repeat at its fulcrum. Come up with a trope or command. What's your version of "Prove them wrong"? Oh, and if you’re thinking of getting young men and women to lick each other? Please, just don’t.
