Speechwriting for staffers is about two things: your speaker’s audience and your team’s logistics. 

Young writers, take heart. Speechwriting does not demand the solitary life of poetic genius. Speechwriting is policymaking and communicating as part of a team.

The Job

  1. Be a great staffer, not just a writer. 
  2. Have humility. Do what has to be be done.
  3. Don’t write for its own sake. Write for higher virtues.
  4. Learn what the practical things your speaker needs to perform. Ask about paper type, font size, use of bullet points, use of indents, etc. This can be just as important as diction, register, and opinions. 
  5. Most of the actual speaking needed day to day is functional. Speeches are about connecting with the audience at hand, not writing the great speeches of history.
  6. Read Bruno’s The Advance Man (always choose a room small enough to look full and never have empty chairs, except inevitably on the floor of the House).
  7. Look beyond the page. Find out the weather, the other speakers on a program, the size of the audience, cameras, microphones, make-up, security, podium size, distractions in the environment (contruction work, protests, an elementary school playground next door), and so on. 
  8. Protect your leader. Take the blame if there is an error. But remember, that won’t get them off the hook with the public or media for a serious blunder.
  9. Be Johnny-on-the-spot. 
  10. Work well with your team, small or large. Advance teams, schedulers, social media, policy writers. Go to them with questions. 
  11. Forget the days of debate, polemical essays, and posting. Don’t make enemies. 
  12. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Suffer embarrassment to get the job done. 
  13. Be a well-rounded, honest, reliable, clean, well-dressed person. 
  14. Research your speaker’s area of interest (district, state, etc.). Read local op-eds and commentary. Talk to opinion leaders. You have to do your own detective work. Good detective work on the audience and your speaker can make a speech go from ‘good enough’ to ‘outstanding.’
  15. Ask experienced fellow staff members to read your work for accuracy.
  16. Always carry a notebook and pen, especially to meetings.
  17. Focus in meetings. Stay off your phone unless asked. 
  18. “Do good work and tell people about it.” The public have a right to know what their representatives are doing. Good and bad.
  19. Be the scheduler and body man’s best friend. Do not give them materials or requests late or in poor condition. 
  20. Play the rough and tumble. Never lie, but exaggerate mildly.  
  21. Follow Morton Blackwell’s Laws of the Public Policy Process.
  22. Have a last-minute plan. What do you do when you get a call to write something in 30 mins? Do you have templates? Are your files saved sensibly? Do you have previous examples? Are they at hand and easy to find? 
  23. Have a crisis plan. What are the worst crises that could happen in your district or to your speaker? A bad local wildfire?  A failure on a bill? A health crisis? A skeleton in the closet?
  24. When you pass around drafts, be meticulous and systematic in your version history. When you give a document to someone to review, make sure they know what it is for and what to do with it. 
  25. Keep photos or scans of all handwritten edits or notes.
  26. Keep a chain of custody. Keep a note of which drafts you have handed over and when. You may hand something over and two weeks later hear “You never gave it to me.” This way you can say, “No, I recorded that I handed you Draft 3 at 10am on October 4.”
  27. Only about 50% of yes RSVPs to free public events will show up. 
  28. If you want to boost audience size, make it something parents are likely to come to. Give awards to kids or have a performance.
  29. You can never be certain folks will show up – a colleague that is scheduled to speak or a guest scheduled to appear in the audience. If you put them in the speech, be on the look out to fix it last minute.
  30. Take refreshments and snacks, and other logistical details, at events seriously. Your speech could be ruined if everyone is asking why they served pork sausage at a Jewish community breakfast. If you anticipate budget cuts that impact families on food stamps, you might not want your speaker first mentioning the idea at a champagne fundraiser wearing a tuxedo. Stop, look, think. 
  31. Learn the full gamut of political writing and communications – policy speeches of course, but also op-eds, media advisories, press releases, statements/quotes, talking points, interviews, emceeing, eulogies, and legislation. 
  32. Always read the memos from your colleagues.
  33. Let members of the press know your speaker is coming. 
  34. Your office will have a press list. Keep your own list as well.
  35. Have honest conversations in your office, as needed, about how credit and blame apply.
  36. Have procedures in your office for assigning, drafting, editing, and approving writing. This is a good question to ask your Chief of Staff on Day 1. 
  37. Think about your work holistically. For instance, if your writing is going to lead to video content for social media, loop them in as needed.
  38. Once your writing has come from your speaker’s mouth, it is their words, not yours. You are an anonymous ghostwriter, helping them put their existing ideas into words. Don’t go around town boasting about a line. Tell your spouse and leave it at that, at least for 10 years. The people who need to know you’re writing well for your boss are smart enough to work it out. 

Writing

  1. Assess your work honestly but don’t trash yourself, and never trash others. Bad writing exposes itself. 
  2. A speech is not a report. It’s not just about conveying facts or opinions, but your speaker’s personality, experiences, and ideas. Your goal is to bring a small audience on your side.
  3. Use props.
  4. It’s sometimes easier to think of speeches as remarks. It’s hard, even for experienced speechwriters, to remember that not every speech has to be the Gettysburg Address. Take the word speech down a peg and it can be less daunting. 
  5. As useful as books of the greatest speeches are, spend just as much time looking at mundane but effective writing in your specific area. For instance, if you work for a member of Congress who needs to pass a bill with a narrow margin, find speeches in the Congressional records (we have 250 years!) from similar moments. Watch videos if available. 
  6. Don’t let your Elected Official give out cheap or convenient praise. It can (will) show up some day in the press or on an election flyer of a once unimportant figure running against a friend. Be mindful. 
  7. Don’t let your speaker say they are a bad speaker or that they are unprepared.
  8. Don’t make cheap political capital out of tragedy.
  9. Improv is best when it’s planned.
  10. Look for awkward language like ‘an active community activist’. I wrote this nightmarish line on a public commendation once. Never again.
  11. Don’t say “John Smith’s 10th District” say “the 10th District, represented by John Smith”. They don’t own it. 
  12. You never look as good as when you’re praising someone else. 
  13. If your speaker was invited to speak or is speaking at a public event, contact the inviter. Get the logistics in detail. Ask what they would like (but do not make any promises).
  14. Get face-time booked with your speaker, if needed. Or ask your speaker what they want using a questionnaire.
  15. Your first draft will always be awful. The goal is to get all the ideas down on paper. 
  16. Sometimes a Zero draft of you recording yourself speaking can help.
  17. Read each draft out loud at each iteration. If you can, get someone else to read it.
  18. Coaching is a part of your job. If your speaker needs it, work on mannerisms, delivery, speed, volume, tone, eye-contact, etc. Pick your battles and prioritize. 

Improving

  1. Study the Sir Winston Method.
  2. Study the Monroe Motivated Sequence.
  3. Study The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing.
  4. Study Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.
  5. Use more direct action verbs. You will never stop having to improve this skill.
  6. Use concrete nouns over abstract ones. 
  7. Use Anglo-Saxon words over French, Latin, or Greek origin words. You do not need to sound like the Redditor who wrote, “Mars’ ground is stony, sandy, and dusty. Dust storms time to time wry the whole tungle.” But definitely avoid “With regard to the corollary to Dr. Gaskell’s theory, which necessitates the assumption that what was hypoblast in the anthropod has become epi­blast in the vertebrate, and vice versa.”
  8. Read Cicero’s legal speeches.
  9. Read day-by-day speeches from your arena in the past (Congress, State Senate, School Board, etc.) as well as media reports on it. Keep track of what they choose to quote. 
  10. Know that a failed vote does not equal a failed speech. You may have convinced the audience you wrote for. But maybe you misread which audience you needed. To quote Captain Picard, “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” Learn and do better next time.
  11. Look for success in the reaction of the audience, in the moment, right after, six months after.
  12. Keep a handbook. Writing is like learning to cook. You can get the basics and know enough to impress, even make a living. But there will never be a day where you will not be able to try something new, a new spice, a new mixture, a new clientele. 
  13. Watch your speeches performed, in person if possible. Take notes. Update and rewrite if it helps.
  14. Learn to both skim and close read. 
  15. To get some new ideas: read British, Irish, and American poetry (pre-WWII); study folk stories; search the news and keep track of anecdotes and personal stories. 
  16. Study story archetypes. 
  17. Learn Latin to master language discipline, memory, suspension of thought, topicality in language, connection to the tradition. To quote W.H.D. Rouse, “Modern English is full of roundabouts, of metaphors without meaning, verbiage, shams: Greek and Latin are plain, direct, true. English can be these things, but it is not.” Help to make English plain, direct, and true.
  18. Learn the ancient rhetorical devices.
  19. Do not overuse ancient rhetorical devices.