Shout out to Michael Long {@MikeWrites} — speechwriter, author, essayist, and award-winning screenwriter and playwright — who presented an amazing lesson in speechwriting at the International Association of Business Communicators (DC Metro) March chapter meeting.
I was reminded of a position I applied for on Capitol Hill early in my career. As part of the interview process, the potential employer gave me two hours to write a speech. I’d never written a speech before. Not only did I not know the right questions to ask, but I didn’t realize that I wasn’t given all the information I needed to complete the task. Mike’s information would have been a lifeline for any communicator in my previous situation.
With periodic time checks, he reminded us that he never gave us instructions on “how to write a sentence.” And with each time check, I was just praising God that Mike was so witty and engaging that he could keep us all awake enough at 8 a.m. to absorb what he had to say.
I took a look at my tweets from Mike’s talk. Here are four of his jewels that resonated with me the most:
- Writer’s block is the fear that what you put on paper won’t match the perfection in your head. Just start and go on.
Eloquently put. I never quite understood what caused my hesitation to commit certain pieces of writing to paper. An idea looks great in your head because, well, it doesn’t really exist. Once it’s on the computer screen, it can breathe. And it could be unattractive. With my client writing and my creative writing, I continually push myself to focus less on putting words to paper and more on the revision stage. - If you’re stuck, finish the sentence, “What I’m trying to say is …”
This principle is one of the cornerstones of aiellejai’s Discover Methodology. Before writing a single word, it’s imperative to have a conversation with the client. Ask them questions. Ask follow up questions. Pretend to Oprah, Barbara Walters, Wendy Williams or whomever you need to imagine yourself to be to get the client to talk. Nine times out of ten, what they say will complete most of the piece for you. - You have to know what your audience is expecting and what they can handle.
All of our writing—whether it’s creative or for the client—is written with the audience in mind. And we like to appeal to the lowest common denominator. We realize that we may be working on a technical piece for a technical audience and using industry lingo may be required. But that doesn’t mean that what we write has to be boring. - Speeches are generally about always making the audience feel good. Aim for feeling.
Not only do stories make the impact of your work crystal clear, but they leave a lasting impression. We hope our clients’ audiences remember what we’ve written, but we bank more on them remembering how our words made them feel. And this feeling is what prompts them to act.