Speech Writing
Parent: Writing and Documentation · researched 2026-05-29T19:34:27.620Z· 5 sources · 0 concepts · skill speech-writing
A speech is built to be heard, not read. The writer's job is to construct sentences that survive the air between the speaker's mouth and the audience's ear — sentences that can be re-listened-to in re
Overview
- A speech is built to be heard, not read. The writer's job is to construct sentences that survive the air between the speaker's mouth and the audience's ear - sentences that can be re-listened-to in real time only by the listener's short-term memory. [source]
1. The talk arc (Duarte / Gallo synthesis)
- Every well-formed speech has the same five-beat skeleton: [source]
- Hook - a sentence, image, statistic, or question that earns the next 30 seconds. [source]
- Frame - what this talk is about and why the audience should care. One sentence. [source]
- Three acts - the body. The rule of three is not aesthetic; it is cognitive. Three things stay with the audience, five don't. [source]
- Turn - the moment where the talk pivots from explanation to implication. [source]
- Call to action - what the audience should do, feel, or remember. [source]
2. The 18-minute rule
- Carmine Gallo's distillation of TED's curation rule: 18 minutes is the ceiling for a focused, memorable single-speaker talk. For longer slots, structure as multiple sub-talks with clear act breaks. [source]
3. The rule of three
- Three is the smallest number that creates a pattern. Use it for: [source]
- Top-level structure (three acts, three stories, three asks) [source]
- Sentence-level lists ("government of the people, by the people, for the people") [source]
- Repeated refrains (Jobs: "Stay hungry. Stay foolish." - repeated three times) [source]
4. Applause-line placement and craft
- Place applause lines at act transitions and the CTA. Never two in a row. [source]
5. Speech reads differently than essay
- Read every draft aloud. If you run out of breath, the sentence is too long. [source]
6. Stage-direction annotation craft
- Stage directions are inline notes to the speaker about delivery. They live in the delivery script, not the published transcript. [source]
- [pause] - short pause, one breath [source]
- [long pause] - full silence, 2–4 seconds [source]
- [lower voice] - drop volume to draw the audience in [source]
- [slow] - drop pace to weight the line [source]
- [wait for laughter] - explicitly note that the speaker should hold [source]
- Place directions on their own line above the line they modify, in brackets. [source]
7. Trust the audience
- Amateur speeches over-explain. Professional speeches withhold, then resolve. [source]
- Tell a story before naming its lesson; let the room reach the conclusion one beat ahead. [source]
- Use specific detail, not abstraction. "A blue notebook on the kitchen table" beats "a personal object." [source]
- Cut your second-best example. Two strong points land harder than three uneven ones. [source]
- Don't apologize for the topic, the time slot, or the room. [source]
8. Ghostwriting ethics
- Capture their voice. Listen to 30+ minutes of their existing speech before drafting. [source]
- Their stories, not yours. Use anecdotes from their life. [source]
- No misattributed lived experience. Never invent a personal anecdote they did not actually experience. [source]
- They get final cut. The speaker must be able to change anything. [source]
Anti-Patterns
- The written-essay-read-aloud. Long sentences, semicolons, nested clauses. [source]
- The five-point list. Audiences forget points four and five. [source]
- The apology open. "I'm not really a speaker…" [source]
- The unmotivated joke. Humor that doesn't serve the arc. [source]
- The buried CTA. Telling the audience what to do in the third-to-last sentence. [source]
- Stage directions in the published transcript. [source]
References
Children
- No children recorded.