What is Speech Writing?
Writing a speech is not any different from other types of writing. When writing a speech, you want to capture the attention of your audience, convey your ideas in a logical manner and present reliable information. Most importantly, you need to keep in mind that the people in your audience cannot react (that is ask questions and get answers) to the speech. You must therefore be extremely clear in writing your speech.
In this article, we will look at the three stages of speech writing.
- Pre-writing Stage of speech writing
- Drafting stage of speech writing
- Revising/Editing Stage of speech writing
1. Pre-writing Stage of speech writing
At the pre-writing stage speech writing you:
- Think about the purpose of delivering the speech, that is, what you would like your audience to learn from your writing.
- Analyse your audience, that is, what they have in common and how you can connect with them. This also includes deciding the
- Language level. The kind of language you use, whether formal or register, depends on the kind of audience the speech will be Presented to.
- Decide on the topic of your speech. This also determines the language to an Extent. The language used in the essay is also dictated by the needs and expectations of your audience.
- Do some preliminary research on your audience.
2. Drafting stage of speech writing
- At the drafting stage of speech writing: Decide on a good introduction, which should include a preview of The main topic before you actually deliver it.
- When Writing the Introduction, pay attention to your first sentence: it interesting, factual and precise. It can be a quotation wt be Scenario, an anecdote or a thought —~ provoking question.
- The content of the speech will vary depending on the topic. It should make up 80% of the total length of the speech.
- In the body of your speech , make sure your content relates to the audience on their personal level by using pronouns such as ‘you’. This helps the audience identify with your speech.
- Use statistics and quotations sparingly in the body of your speech because you might overwhelm the audience with information that they can’t understand easily.
- Only include only the most striking factual material in the body of your speech.
- Finally, draft the conclusion. This is supposed to re-emphasise your motive of the speech and to pull your audience’s attention back to the main points.
- Your conclusion should restate your main peints without merely repeating them.
- Be explicit about what the audience should be taking away from your talk and, if appropriate, give your listeners some form of action to take.
Here is a short example of a speech.
You are not hopeless
Introduction
The world is full of people who need your help because they perceive you as a strong, capable and responsible person. Why should you convince yourself otherwise?
Body
You have a future one of the reasons you must never look down upon yourself is that you have a future. In fact, when people look at you, they only see your tomorrow. You could be the doctor, lawyer, teacher, wife, husband or even the president of the nation in that future. When you look at yourself today, you may not see why hordes of people would invest so much hope in you — but time is coming when you shall be exploiting the gifts that God invested in you.
Work hard, with your eyes wide open, that your dreams and the worthy person that people see in you may one day become a reality.
Conclusion
To conclude, I want to repeat that you are not hopeless. You are the silver lining that prophets of hope see in the dark clouds up in the sky.
Task
* find out which information stands out most in a positive way?
* find out which strategies will help you connect with the audience?
* find out where your listeners might lose the flow of your argument or description?
* find out what might bore your audience?
This information will be useful in the next stage of speech writing.
3. Revising/Editing Stage of Speech Writing
Revising a speech is based on the weaknesses and strengths you notice
during your practice.
At this stage, you should:
- Emphasise the parts that stood out in a positive way and change those that did not. Specifically, you should:
- Check the organisation of your speech by writing a different outline. This should help you to notice the paragraphs that do not flow and material that is repeated unnecessarily so that you can delete it.
- Ensure that you have included verbal cues into the internal structure of the speech. These include words such as: * First, Second Third These allow the audience to put together the pieces of your speech without trying too hard to follow it. This will help the audience to concentrate on the important points of your speech.
- Ensure that there are strong transition signals that will help your listeners see how each bit of new information relates to what they have heard so far.
- Use signals such as: * Another fact that supports my main point is ... (to add an idea). This argument does not make sense if you consider that ... (to contrast an idea). Repeat all the crucial points using the same language where possible.
- Simplify your vocabulary.
- Make sure your sentences are short and simple. Avoid asides and digressions.
- Edit and limit pronoun use. Listeners can have a hard time rembering what ‘it’, ‘they’ or ‘this’ refers to. Stick to the nouns. T much use of pronouns will only confuse the listeners.