How To Write a Speech that Matters – 10 Top Speech Writing Tips

Do you want to write a speech? Do you want to learn how to write a good speech? What speech writing tips should you know? What do you need to know as a speech writer? Do you need speech writing help?

At Benjamin Ball Associates, we have been writing and editing speeches, as well as teaching speech writing skills and coaching speakers for over 15 years.

Meet the Author: Benjamin Ball

Ben is the founder of Benjamin Ball Associates and leads the presentation coaching and pitch deck creation teams. Formerly a corporate financier in the City of London, for 20+ years he’s helped businesses win with better pitches and presentations, particularly investor pitches. He is a regular speaker and a guest lecturer at Columbia Business School and UCL London.  Follow Ben on LinkedIn or visit the contact page. 

What Does It Take to Write a Speech?

To write a speech that works, you need to know the tricks of the speech writing trade. And writing an effective speech is challenging. If you want to write a keynote speech or an ordinary speech, this is for you.

Here you will find plenty of practical tips and advice so that you can ease your speech writing journey and write a speech that will work with your audience. This will help you feel more confident and get the results you want.

The biggest problem you have when speech writing is that every speech and every audience is different. That means it’s hard to know if your speech will be successful. For this reason, good speech writing is both an art and a science.

I will repeat that: The most important thing to understand about writing a speech is that speech writing is both a science and an art.

So, you will only write a compelling speech if you use a careful mix of logic and emotion. And that is why writing speeches and the speech writing process is so complex and so interesting.

Speech writing is both a science and an art.

• Speech writing is a science because how to write a speech has been studied and we know what works and what does not work.
• Writing a speech is also an art because every speech is different and every good speech is successful in different ways.

To help you write a great speech, our speech writers have here given you ten of their top lessons for effective speech writing. These tips are equally valid for big keynote speeches, for a business conference and for other types of speeches.

What Makes A Good Speech?

A good speech connects with your audience and keeps them interested from start to finish. That means you need to speak directly to them, making them feel like part of the conversation.

It’s not just about what you say – but how you say it—your tone, pace and energy all matter. Most importantly, you must have a clear message that sticks in people’s minds, backed up by stories, examples, or humour that make it memorable.

Top tips include: keep it simple, avoid jargon and make every word count. Most importantly, you should speak with confidence and authenticity—if you believe in what you’re saying, your audience will too.

Speech Writing Advice From the Experts

This advice is based on our 15+ years of successfully supporting business people when they need to write and deliver a speech that makes a difference. We write speeches, we edit speeches and we coach people to create and deliver impressive speeches.

How to Write a Speech – Top Tips

Let’s review each of these speech writing tips in more detail and explore how you can use each of these to create better speeches:

1. Speak to your audience using their language

The number one rule of how to write a speech is to know your audience. But what should you look out for?  To really grab your audience’s attention, you should put yourself in their shoes.  For example, the best way to prepare is to ask yourself: 

• Why are they coming to this speech? 
• What are they expecting as your main ideas? 
• What ideas are familiar to them?
• What big idea will resonate?
• What are their worries?
• What matters to them?
• What metaphors do they use?
• What thought provoking question could I use?

The more you can get into your audience’s head, have a specific purpose to your speech and speak their language, the more you will be able to write a great speech.

2. Help your audience like the speaker

It’s a truth that audiences will only listen if they like the speaker. So, when writing a persuasive speech, what do you do? Three speech writing tricks that will help your speaker be more likeable include:

• Make a good impression in your opening words. If you grab attention early and show a connection between the speaker and the audience, then you have started your speech well. What attention getter will you use?
• Be human. We all like people who are like us. If you read the research it tells us that we like people with whom we share something in common. The link could be a school, a hobby, friends, past employers or even nationality or first name. Find that link and you’ll find it easier to persuade people.  And when you write a speech, share something about the speaker,  it will make them more human.
• Keep your audience nodding. This means showing in your writing that you know your audience and care about your audience. Because you know your audience you can address key points they care about. For example, you can write about what they speak about, using the same words they use and what’s top of their minds.

See how Mohammed Qahtani won the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking by endearing himself with his audience.

This will help your speech writing hit home.

3. Make your audience feel comfortable during your speech

As well as helping your audience like you, to write a great speech you want to make your audience feel comfortable. You can do this in many ways; and this will depend on who you are talking to. One obvious way is to avoid Death by PowerPoint. In fact, a good speech should involve few if any visual aids.  

Another way to help your audience feel comfortable is to avoid contradicting their beliefs. For example, if you start your speech by stating that the universe is 1000 years old, you will alienate most people. Instead, you want to get your audience nodding along towards the start of your speech and throughout the body of your speech.

With our bespoke public speaking coaching, you can learn these skills quickly. Learn more about public speaking coaching here.

4. A great speech should feel more like a conversation

The art of great speech writing is using simple words and short sentences to express big ideas.  The topic you are speaking about might be complex, but you want to use the same sort of language that you’d use when chatting to somebody. 

One mistake that inexperienced speech writers make it to use complex language or to use language that sounds like someone addressing a giant crowd. 

In fact, the best speech writers and the best speakers use clear, simple language that is accessible by all. The simpler the language you use, the more impressive you will appear.

You can learn all these skills with our award-winning public speaking coaching. Find out how we can help you transform your speeches and speech writing.

Speak to an expert. Get a free consultation

5. Understand that logic alone will not win your audience

“Don’t be a logic bully” is a favourite phrase of ours. That’s because logic by itself is not persuasive. If logic could be persuasive, then speeches would become lists of facts; and presentations would become spreadsheets.

Aristotle, 2,500 years ago, outlined how to create a persuasive argument. He said that persuasion required all three of logos, ethos and pathos. You can translate these Greek words as Logic, Credibility and Emotion. This means that to persuade your audience your speech writing needs a healthy balance of logic, credibility and emotion.

6. Great speech writing means making the complicated simple to understand

One of the most common mistakes of inexperienced speech writers is to make their speeches too complex. They assume that because the speaker is smart, they (and their audience) will be most comfortable with complex ideas and complex words. This is wrong.

Complexity and formal language is off-putting. Our brains love simplicity. When you write a speech you should make it easy for your audience. That means having a clear core message.

Having written and edited hundreds successful speeches during our public speaking coaching, we are often surprised how simple the best speeches become. But making complex speeches simple is hard work. Anyone can write a speech with extra facts. It takes real skill to write a speech with the right tone of voice: simple words, short phrases and big ideas. Big ideas expressed with small words.

Your word choice and how you use rhetorical devices can help you here. For example, by using rhetorical questions, sets of three, clear contrasts and metaphor, your words are more likely to resonate with your target audience.

7. To grab your audience, be a teacher

Generally, audiences don’t like being preached to or sold to. Audiences prefer to feel they are making decisions on their own. On the other hand, most audiences love learning new things. One of the joys of listening to great speeches is that you are constantly coming across new ideas and new ways of seeing the world.  So, when you write a speech, ask yourself:

• How can you help your audience see the world differently?
• What can you teach them?
• What’s your main message?
• If your audience comes away feeling they have learned something new, they are more likely to be impressed by your speech and your speech writing.
  
  

8. Use stories, examples and anecdotes when speech writing

One of my favourite sayings when you write a speech is “Facts get forgotten, but stories get repeated.” A personal story is more compelling than the most powerful numbers. Yet, too many speeches fail to harness the power of a compelling story.

A good story in your speech can be like one of those multi-tools. It can do many jobs at once. Personal stories can help bring your subject to life. A story can make it easy for someone to understand what good looks like and a strong story will grab attention and be memorable.

We’ve written a few good articles on business storytelling and this is one of my favourite

9. Have a strong start and a strong end to your speech

When you write a speech, any type of speech, you’ll get very used to carefully crafting the beginning and end of your speech, sometimes before writing the body of the speech.  A good introduction is important because it sets the tone of the entire talk and it grabs attention.  Read this article about how to start a speech. The end is important because audience tend to remember what they heard and how they felt at the end.  This means you want to spend time crafting these bookends to your speech. 

Many speech writers have advice about speech writing.  One of my favourite pieces of advice is from Winston Churchill who shared his process for writing speeches:

1. A strong beginning
2. One tight theme
3. Simple language
4. Word pictures e.g. “Iron curtain”
5. Emotional ending
6. Editing

If you can incorporate these ideas when you write a speech, you’ll create much better speeches. 

10. Keep editing your speech writing until it can’t get better

Never be happy with the first draft of your speech.  The hard work of writing a speech only starts when many people think its over.  For example:

• You need to read your speech out loud
• You need to try it out in front of an audience
• You want to make changes where anything is not quite right
• You rehearse your speaker thoroughly so that any wrinkles are ironed out

These final stages of improving how you write a speech will help transform an ordinary speech into a compelling speech.  The work of a speech writer is not done until the speech is delivered.  Until then you should aim to improve it word by word. 

You’ll probably add many more rhetorical techniques to your speech as you edit, e.g rhetorical question, better rhythm, stronger words, more imagery. See this photo of Obama working on a script by speech writer John Favreau.  Photo from The White House’s official Flickr account.

Practical Steps to Write a Good Speech

Writing a great speech starts with a clear plan. Here’s a plan you can use:

1. Define your purpose—are you informing, persuading, or entertaining?
2. Know your audience to tailor your tone and examples
3. Research your topic thoroughly to build credibility
4. Write first a 1-paragraph summary, then an outline, finally a longer text
5. Structure your speech with a
   • strong introduction (hook your audience)
   • a body (organised into 3 main points with supporting evidence)
   • memorable conclusion (reinforce your message).
6. Write conversationally, using short sentences and vivid language.
7. Finally, practice aloud to refine pacing and tone.
8. Revise as needed and consider timing—most speeches should be concise.

With these steps, you’ll craft a speech that engages and resonates.

How to Write a Great Speech – Next Steps

The tools above will all help.

• Your speech must be simple.
• Your speech must be engaging.
• You need to include case studies and stories to bring it to life.

Of course, speech writing is not easy. If it were, our firm would not exist. Every day we help people create compelling speeches and presentations. With advice and coaching we add value by making speeches compelling.

We’ve been transforming speeches for 15 years and we do it for some of the most successful businesses in the world. Learn more about how to write a speech and our public speaking training.

Why Choose Us:
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For 15+ years we’ve been the trusted choice for leading businesses and executives throughout the UK, Europe and the Middle East. We’ll help you improve corporate presentations through presentation coaching, public speaking training and expert advice on pitching to investors.

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Speak to Louise on +44 20 7018 0922 or email info@benjaminball.com to transform your speeches, pitches and presentations.

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FAQ: How to Write a Speech

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