Writing for Others

It’s an honor to be asked to write a speech for someone else. It is also an art. It involves not just being a good writer, but being able to get close enough to the person you’re writing for to earn their trust and to know their passions and stories, and be able to capture their way of speaking. Write in their voice.

So how do you write for others?

Ideally, get to know the person first. In this class that’s easy. You’ll be writing for your speaking partners. You’ll have the opportunity to sit down with them and discuss what it is he or she wants to talk about. As well as get a sense of who they are and what their interests and experiences are.

If you’re writing for a mayor, a dean, a CEO, or another busy leader, face-to-face conversation is a luxury that probably won’t be available often, if at all. In that case, you’ve got to learn about them from other people like key staffers; look at their speeches and read what they’ve said before; read what’s been written about them. Listen to how they speak.

When you do get time to meet with the speaker, come prepared to make the most out of that time together. Have a list of questions that will help you get at what that person’s stake in the issue is. It’s good to make notes, but it’s even better to record the conversation and later transcribe it.

In the interview with the speaker, probe for their experiences as well as their feelings. Get at their background. Get them to tell their stories. It’s the personal experiences and the stories that make the speaker credible…and the speech memorable.

The benefit of recording the interview is that you not only get down what was said, but you get the person’s voice. You get a sense of how they speak, the words they use, and, even more important, what they’re really interested in. What they’re passionate about.

If you’ve done a good job of interviewing and you’ve recorded it, you can end up with a transcript that can sometimes serve as the first draft of the speech. Since the first draft involves overcoming inertia (even writer’s block), it’s usually the hardest draft to write. Typing a transcript is a lot easier than creating a speech from scratch. Sure, it will be changed. But it’s much easier to edit than to write.

Once you’ve got this rough draft, flesh it out with facts and examples, data, and images. This requires research. Often this information can be found on the staff or within the administration or corporation. Go to the departments that cover the areas you’re talking about. Get their latest data and studies. Talk to the experts. Try to find something surprising; some new take on the issue that hasn’t been discussed before. Also, try to find personal anecdotes and illustrations that will show, not just tell what you’re talking about.

When you’ve created a draft that you’re satisfied with, try to get to see the speaker again if you can. Send them the draft ahead of time so that the time together is spent on what needs to be changed or improved, not sitting there reading the text together. In this session—which is most likely the last chance you’ll get with this person before they speak—probe again for their personal experiences and stories. This will make the speech their speech. It will also make it more conversational and natural to deliver because they’re recounting what they did rather than reciting the words that you’ve written. Your main job is to make the speech their speech. Your success is their ownership of the speech.

Once the speaker has blessed the speech, make sure that it’s seen again by all those who need to “vet” it—lawyers, department heads, deputies, et al. You’ve probably already done this with an earlier draft. Just make sure the final draft is approved before it is delivered.

Make the speech as easy to read/deliver as possible; for example, use a large type size; mark up the text to emphasize important points; insert pauses; number every page; spell difficult-to-pronounce names and places phonetically, etc.

If possible, help the person practice the speech. If you can, get them to practice it in front of a camera so that they can see themselves delivering it. Also, visit the location where the speech will be delivered and check out the sound equipment, lectern, and a/v technology if that’s going to be used.

Make sure that whoever accompanies the speaker to the engagement brings an extra copy of the final, marked-up version of the speech. (Or a disc or flash drive if they’ll be using a TelePrompTer.)

Two of the best known (and best) “modern” presidential speechwriters were Ted Sorensen, who wrote for JFK, and Peggy Noonan, who wrote for Ronald Reagan. Sorensen had the distinct advantage of working, not just as a speechwriter, but also as a close personal advisor to President Kennedy for a long time. As a result, there was a much closer bond forged between speaker and speechwriter than most other presidential writers enjoyed. He had the president’s voice as well as his thoughts down. He also had the president’s trust.*

Noonan, on the other hand, was one of Reagan’s writers and didn’t enjoy a special relationship with him. I doubt that any of his writers did. But she captured the former radio announcer-actor’s voice perfectly in the speech she wrote commemorating the 40^th Anniversary of D-Day, the allied invasion of Normandy. Take a look at Reagan’s “Pointe du Hoc” speech.

Some words of speechwriting wisdom from these two practitioners:

First, from Peggy Noonan:

“Great speeches have always had great soundbites. The problem now is that the young technicians who put together speeches are paying attention to the soundbite, not to the text as a whole, not realizing that all great soundbites happen by accident, which is to say, all great soundbites are yielded up inevitably, as part of the natural expression of the text. They are part of the tapestry, they aren’t a little flower somebody sewed on.”

Sorensen on his relationship with Kennedy

“It is noteworthy…that four of his (JFK’s) best speeches were delivered in the summer of 1963 after he and I had collaborated on speeches for nearly ten years. In part, this reflects the fact that great events can evoke great speeches, and the summer of 1963 was filled with great events. But this timing also may reflect that, in our respective roles, we had both learned as we worked together, and improved our collaborative style.”

To learn more about presidential speechwriting, which is seen as the height of American speechwriting positions, I’d recommend reading their memoirs: Ted Sorensen’s Counselor and Peggy Noonan’s What I Saw at the Revolution. I also recommend two other books about presidential speechwriting: Michael Waldman’s Potus Speaks and Robert Schlesinger’s White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters. Noonan’s On Speaking Well also has good points about writing for someone else.

NOTE: Jon Favreau, who was Obama’s chief speechwriter, probably enjoyed a relationship with his boss that was closer to Sorensen’s and Kennedy’s than most other White House speechwriters. Obama was said to trust him. And Favreau described himself as “Ted Williams’ batting coach”, acknowledging his boss’s way with words and considerable speaking talent.