The Lost Art of the Great Speech: How to Write It * How to Deliver It

But it ain't easy, folks

None of this is meant to imply that preparing a speech and delivering it in public are easy. You must work hard and practice diligently to apply these fundamentals to your own opportunities and needs. How hard? How diligently? Some accomplished speakers say they spend as much as two or three hours of preparation time for each minute of speaking time. The great cleric Harry Emerson Fosdick reportedly spent ten hours of prep time for each minute of pulpit time.

A friend of mine who is a professional speech writer claims facetiously that Abraham Lincoln has been responsible for many a badly written speech. My friend doesn't say that the Emancipator himself wrote bad speeches. But because Lincoln is reputed to have scribbled ...