You're a Writer, You Can Write a Speech

What I learned from writing a speech for a Class of 24 Awards Evening

Earlier this year I gave an author talk, and someone in the audience thought I was inspiring. As a result, she invited me to be the inspirational speaker at the school where she teaches for the Class of 24. I am honoured to have been asked - but here’s the thing …

There’s an expectation that if you can write a novel, you can write an inspirational speech - but the two are entirely different skillsets, not least because a novel is long-form, and the speech is short-form. Still, I used some of the skills I’ve learned in novel writing to help me out, and I can see how writing a speech is going to tighten up my writing.

Here’s what I learned from the process:

1. Start with the end in mind: I considered what I wanted my final lines of the speech to be, what would those words be that might stay in the minds of students. These were young people aged 16-17. I like to think about the end with my novel writing, although it’s fair to say, the end might change, because sometimes my characters do something that lead to a far better ending than I originally came up with, but knowing the end does help, even if it does change.

2. Next, I jotted down bullet points of what I might include. I kept going, knowing I’d end up deleting more than half. This is something I do when I start thinking about a novel - what are the givens, the must-haves? What are the ‘what-ifs’?

3. I then identified themes that connected some of the bullet points together, which helped me to understand the message I was wanting to get across, as well as highlighting any bullet points that were simply repetition. In terms of my novel writing, I’m not sure that I do this with my chapters, so from now on, I’m going to give this a try.

4. Now I had to consider the length of time I had to give the speech - I was told I had 10-15 minutes. This meant I needed a tight speech that packed a punch in as few words as possible. In my novel writing, I have a sense of the number of words for the whole novel, and for each chapter, but I’m not sure I use it to ensure my words pack a punch. I’ll have a look at that in future.

5. Because, as writers, we know that readers like stories, I felt like I needed a story to get started, so I jotted down a couple of stories from my own life. I thought about recent ones, some from a decade or two back, and then settled on a story from when I was 15, that I could then weave the rest of the speech around. The story I chose was based around a pair of patent leather shoes I had for school - more on that another day.

6. From there, I wondered what life lessons I could extract from that one story, and realised that I could demonstrate a strong theme. I love looking for themes in my writing, so this is something I will keep doing with my novels.

7. I then wrote the speech out, and read it out loud. I must have read it aloud about 5 or 6 times before I was able to identify the sections that were either boring me, or that were unnecessary. I deleted those sections. Did they leave any gaps? If so, I connected parts of the speech to fill those gaps.

8. Next, I read it aloud about another 5 times, and this time I looked for times I tripped over my words - these were bits where the sentence structure needed improving. I do read my novels out loud, but I think I could benefit from doing it more often.

9. So I then spent a few days editing and editing and editing. The whole speech is only the length of a chapter in a novel (around 2,300 words), and I know I don’t edit each chapter with the same intensity, so there’s a lesson for my writing going forward. Thankfully I love editing, because for me, editing a first draft is when the real writing and the true magic happens.

10. And finally, more reading aloud, but now to rehearse it, which allowed me to ad lib with confidence as I gave the speech. This is an old skill of mine, and one I am fortunate to have - that I can build my confidence through practice. So I guess the lesson for my novel writing is to keep writing until the practice builds my confidence in myself as a writer.

And after all that, I can report that the feedback was good. People came up to me afterwards to tell me how inspirational they found it. Phew! I’d love to hear about what you’ve been up to recently, and how you’ve found lessons for your writing.

By the way, my imposter feelings tried to creep in when I was told I was inspirational, and asked to do an inspirational speech - my? Inspiring? I don’t see myself that way, but I have to remind myself that if someone else does, then that’s their experience of me, and it’s dismissive of me to say that I am not inspiring. But I want you to know that even those of us who come across as confident can still experience imposter feelings. So if that’s you, know you are not alone.