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

Why am I doing this?

The next step in preparing to write is to set forth the purpose of the speech. Don't even think about writing until you have a clear notion of what the speech is supposed to accomplish.

Remember from the previous discussion that the six basic purposes of speeches are to entertain, inform, inspire, advocate, motivate, and convince or persuade. These are expressed here as one-word generalities, but the statement of purpose that you write for your speech should be more specific and more detailed. Include in the statement exactly what you want members of the audience to do, feel, or think, and how you want them to react. As examples, I composed statements of purpose for four speeches from my files. I wrote the statement from ...