The Speechwriting Secret Every Writer Should Steal

“Study great writers,” they say. Sure, good advice.

But why stop there? Study anyone who is great at getting a response. And to me, speechwriters top that list.

They change minds. Get votes and donations. Bring people to their feet.

And talk about memorable! You can probably quote more bits of speeches than you can any other type of writing: “I have a dream.” “Ask not what your country can do for you…” “We will fight them on the beaches…” And perhaps even all of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

This is why even though I've never written a speech for anyone but myself, I've got around a dozen books on speechwriting.

Right now, I’m rewatching the TV series The West Wing for the umpteenth time, and finding that it’s a masterclass in speechwriting.

For example, here’s press secretary Toby Ziegler explaining to his bodyguard the benefits of free trade, unable to restrain himself from both composing a speech and explaining how he’s doing it…

With free trade food is cheaper. Clothes are cheaper. Steel is cheaper. Cars are cheaper. Phone service is cheaper. You feel me building a rhythm here? That’s ‘cause I’m a speechwriter and I know how to make a point.

It lowers prices. It raises income. You see what I did with “lowers” and “raises” there?

It’s called the science of listener attention. We did repetition. We did floating opposites. And now you end with the one that’s not like the others. Ready? Free trade stops wars.

Great rhetoric can enlighten. It can inspire. And it can even, as has often been said of Churchill, win wars. (See what I did there?)

Toby showed us how to transform a boring list of facts or points into something unforgettable:

1. Connect the Items

   1. Use anaphora to connect each item at the beginning: “I have a dream…” (King), “We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the fields…” (Churchill).

   2. Use epistrophe to connect at the end: “Of the people, by the people, for the people” (Lincoln).

   3. Use antithesis (opposites): Toby’s “lowers prices/raises income.”

2. Resolve

   1. You can just let it relentlessly build

   2. Or you can violate the pattern at the end, either for serious effect (Toby’s “stops wars”), or for humor, for example: “Friends should have courage. Friends should have empathy. Friends should have bail money.”

Now that you know how to do it, how can you be sure you’ve done it?

Bill Bonner, founder of newsletter publishing giant Agora, once said you could tell the power of serious writing by dramatically reading it aloud as if it’s a speech, and pounding the table at appropriate places.

If it feels silly to give it a dramatic reading, if there are no places where a good pound feels natural, well, then there’s your problem.

Orators have an advantage over writers: they can see their audience and get instantaneous feedback on their reactions.

That’s how they know that you can’t just make a point. You must hammer it, as Winston Churchill once advised a future king of England, “with a piledriver.”