Speeches need to captivate, or they get ignored.
We’ve all heard speeches that probably looked great on paper, but that died in delivery. It wasn’t because the information was wrong or bad. It was likely because the delivery was stilted because it wasn’t written for the ear.
Too many people sit down to write a speech and treat it like any other form of writing. It’s not. It lives in the ear and in the delivery.
Someone once asked me to fix a speech that had underperformed at an event. When I reviewed it, I could immediately see why. The language was long and flowing. The words taken from a thesaurus. And the cadence was wrong.
It was written for the page, not for someone to speak aloud.
Write for the Ear, Not the Page
When an audience listens to a speech, they want to be caught up in the language—the rhythm of the words, the cadence of the sentences, and the flow of ideas. That can’t happen if the writing is flat.
Since speeches are heard, not read, they need:
- Clear sentences—often short, declarative phrases
- Natural rhythms
- Conversational language—no thesauruses allowed or ten-dollar words
- Clear transitions
- Pauses—these are essential in delivery
- Breath
- Emotional movement from beginning to end
The best way to write a speech is to speak it aloud. Read sections as you write them (or transcribe yourself talking through the speech ideas) to make sure they sound as good spoken as they read on the page.
Let the Speech Sound Like the Speaker
Every speaker has a voice that needs to stand out in the speech.
Without a strong sense of voice, there is no delivery and no speech. They depend on each other.
If you are writing for yourself, listen to tapes of how you speak naturally. Talk through the speech and transcribe what you said. You can (and should) clean it up, but keep the voice strong.
Follow your natural patterns. Some people speak in phrases (think Obama), while others take you on journeys with their stories (think Brené Brown or storytellers on The Moth). Write your speech to honor those tendencies, because you will struggle in delivery if you try to adapt your speaking to match the written word.
Write to match your delivery, not the other way around.
In fact, match everything that makes up your voice. This means matching the words to your:
- Personality
- Experience
- Perspective
- Sentence structure
- Word choice
- Rhythm
- Asides
- Emotional honesty
A speech should sound like you, or the person delivering it. It should sound so much like you that the audience can’t imagine anyone else giving that speech.
It also needs to be appropriate for the audience. You, but geared for them.
You wouldn’t speak the same way to a bunch of bankers as you would to a group of nine-year-olds. You’d alter your word choice and delivery.
Speeches need to work for both the speaker and the audience. This means leaning into voice and altering it as needed for different audiences.
It doesn’t mean changing who you are, just your delivery.
Avoid Killing the Voice
It is so easy to kill voice in the edit. We want everything to sound polished and right. But speaking doesn’t work that way.
When you write for the ear, you fall into different patterns and they aren’t always strictly grammatical. But no one cares if the delivery works.
Keep those odd phrases only you tend to say. Match your rhythms and patterns, even if you have to end with a preposition to get there. Listen first, edit second.
Here are some common ways people kill their voice:
- Over-editing
- Trying to sound too formal or smart
- Letting grammar rules flatten natural rhythms
- Mimicking someone else’s style
- Removing emotion
- Polishing until the speech sounds generic or like it was written by a bot
- Writing in a way that is technically correct, but not speakable
Use Story to Create Connections
One of the easiest ways to drop into your voice is to tell a story.
Our brains love stories—telling them and receiving them. We open up and absorb information from stories 22 times more than from facts alone.
But stories also ground our voices.
Pick a story that reveals who you are and what you believe. This is the time to be vulnerable. You can decide to what degree.
Stories help speeches feel comfortable. They create an emotional connection and give the audience something to hold onto.
Don’t tell stories as decoration, but as a way to serve the speech and the audience.
Use Concrete Language
Be visual and visceral in your speech. This means dropping into the stories you tell. Don’t just summarize what happened, immerse your audience into the story.
Use concrete and sensory language. Allow them to feel the story from inside the experience.
This means using strong verbs and including sensory information—what you saw, heard, felt, tasted, smelled, and thought. Go straight to the details without filtering them through phrases like: “I felt,” “I saw”, “I heard”.
Concrete language is easier to hear, imagine, and remember, while abstract language can make a speech feel vague and distant.
Practice Aloud Before Finalizing
You can’t know how a speech works until you’ve delivered it.
Make the final rounds of edits on a speech during delivery. Not before an audience (at least, not an audience of more than 1-2). Stand up and read the speech. Mark any passages where you stumble. Highlight sections that feel flat. Mark passages where you lose your breath. Circle parts that feel great.
Once you have a marked-up speech, go back to editing.
Change the rhythm of the sections that made you stumble. Rearrange the sentence until it feels comfortable to speak.
Do the same with sections that felt flat. Beef them up with details. Swap out the cadence and rhythm. Insert a story to illustrate the point. Or delete the section altogether. Do whatever serves the speech.
During this process, also look for:
- Weak transitions
- Awkward sentences
- Places where the rhythm breaks
- Words that don’t sound natural
- Points where you need to breathe or pause
Try to make the areas that weren’t working match those that did.
Then do it all again.
Keep delivering the speech and marking it until there is nothing left to change. Then you have a speech worth delivering.
That’s when you find a test audience and try it out.
Let them guide you to problem areas. Mark up the speech again and start the process over until you feel comfortable.
If you can’t find an audience, record yourself and listen to the speech objectively. Mark up areas that don’t sound right.
Only once you have completed this process should you practice your delivery.
Build in Pauses
Pauses are part of the writing and delivery. They help the audience absorb a point.
They also give you an opportunity to take a breath or a sip of water. Build pauses into your speech.
You shouldn’t feel like you are running a marathon. Give yourself a break.
Pauses also draw attention to what you are saying. It cues the audience to pay attention. Place them at key moments.
Use Pace, Tone, and Volume Intentionally
Pacing also plays a part.
Slow down when you are saying something important or vulnerable.
Emotional sections should have a slower pace too.
Speed up when you need to insert a bit of energy into a lower-impact section.
Vary your tone so it doesn’t feel flat. No one enjoys listening to a monotone delivery. They want vocal dynamics. A voice that moves up and down with the meaning. Volume that shifts from louder to softer to match the emotional tone of what’s being said.
Get louder when you want people to really hear what you have to say.
Get softer when you want them to feel.
And finally, take a breath. Don’t rush. It will make you more nervous and the audience uncomfortable. If you find yourself speeding through a section, stop. Start again at a slower pace.
We all get nervous; it’s natural. But try to contain it once you notice if creeping into your delivery.
Avoid Sounding Scripted
A speech needs structure, but it still needs life.
The goal shouldn’t be to memorize a perfect speech. It should be to deliver a clear message in an meaningful way. To connect with your audience and share something that matters.
You don’t need perfection. You need honesty and personality.
No one will care about a few stumbles in the delivery if they are part of a speech that sounds good.
The best speeches don’t sound written. They sound shaped and spoken by someone who means every word.
This concludes our series on speech writing. If you missed the first three blogs, you can find them here: Find the Right Topic for Your Speech, How to Open and Close a Speech, and How to Keep the Middle from Sagging.