The Art of Speeches and Presentations: The Secrets of Making People Remember What You Say

CONCLUSION

You have gone all the way through the process and, it is to be hoped, your initial anxiety about writing and performing will have diminished. The skills of writing and speaking well are important ones to master and not just for reasons of professional advancement. We all contribute to the conduct of public discourse and the good health of the language depends on its use. It is harder these days than it used to be to make really fine speeches. Some of the great issues have disappeared, the mass audience means that language has become more demotic and politics and business are more mediated and choreographed than they once were. But it is still possible to write well, rather than badly, and the speech writer is an important person to have in the organization. Treat them well. If you don’t you will be missing the opportunity to make the best case that you can make for yourself.

Attention to Detail

So, by now you have gone all the way to delivery. It probably feels like the process has had more in common with the process of having a child. But, really, it’s just a speech. It won’t often be the making of you and it will still less often be the breaking of you. Part of the point of this book has been to demystify the process of writing a speech, the better to allow you to be tranquil about it. Anxiety is almost always the enemy of accomplishment. It is common for people to believe that a speech writer has to have the gift of a poet. Although that would never go amiss, I ...