wellwriter

Barack Obama’s inauguration speech on Tuesday got me thinking about the importance of speech writing. To my knowledge Obama writes all of his own speeches– including the incredible race relations speech he delivered in Philadelphia last year, did you know that? Unfortunately this has also become quite a lost art lately. I visit
www.craigslist.com almost every single day looking for freelance writing jobs, and there
 is often an ad for a speech writer listed. Some of these ads offer money for putting beautiful words in some one’s mouth, and that is absolutely nothing to sneeze at.

If you happen to need a speech written but don’t want to part with any cash, however,
I found through a little research that there are lots of great websites that will help you
come up with just the right things to say, ala “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
 I would start by typing “speach writing” in the url window, in case there is a web
site better suited to your needs than the ones I’ve found, but just to get you started,
here is a brief list of some speech writing websites I discovered:
   http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/speech/
   http://712educators.about.com/cs/speeches/a/speechwriting.htm
   http://speeches.com/
   http://www.speechtips.com/
   http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3707.html

These websites will help you get on your way and vary in their technique. The first two are for the novice and they will hold your hand and take you through the process step-by-step. The third and fourth websites I found are pages from websites made to tell you everything you could ever want to know about speech writing, as well as a “how-to”.

The back story can be useful; it gives you something to keep in mind for sharpening your own speech to a fine point. In college I bought the book Great American Speeches while I was taking a communications course, to give myself inspiration for how best to dazzle my audience when I spoke.

The final link listed above is from Harvard Business School online, and will help you write an effective presentation in a business environment. As a word of caution, let me say that while we’d all like to be able to stir a crowd into emotion and action like Barack Obama and inspire with timeless phrases like Dr. Martin Luther King, it isn’t going to be possible the first time we try, but don’t get discouraged. Speech writing is a very specialized practice that takes years to perfect. And remember of course that Obama and King, John F. Kennedy and their kind had been writing speeches most of their lives; it should be no surprise they are brilliant at it.

Some of the ads posted on craigslist are for relatively simple speeches, like the kind you would hear at a bar mitzvah or a wedding, but there is no reason you can’t impress with your writing prowess on these ocassions. A well-written, thoughtful, evocative speech will stay in listener’s minds for years and years to come, and maybe even influence others when it’s their turn to make a speech at some special event.

Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery; if your words remain in the hearts and minds of others long after you have spoken them, you have achieved immortality.

Good luck!

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