How to write a speech: a step-by-step guide with examples

To write a speech, start with the audience and one sentence about what they should know, feel or do when you sit down. Outline an opening, two or three main points and a close, and give each part a share of your time limit at 130 to 150 words a minute: a five-minute speech is about 650 to 750 words. Draft it the way you talk, in short sentences for listeners who can't go back a line. Then read it aloud with a timer, cut it to fit and rehearse until the page is only a safety net.

The method below works for a class assignment, a wedding toast, a eulogy or a conference talk. One running example goes through every stage: a four-minute speech at a food pantry's volunteer dinner, taken from a blank page to a marked-up reading copy.

Start with the audience and the occasion

An essay is written for whoever picks it up. A speech is written for particular people, in a particular room, at a particular point in the evening. Before drafting, answer these in writing:

• Who is listening? How many people, what they already know about your subject and what they think of it. Classmates who have sat through five speeches on your topic need a different opening than a board that has read your report.
• Why are they there? Guests at a retirement party came for warmth. People at a budget hearing came for numbers. Write for the reason they came.
• What happens before and after you? Speaking third after a long dinner leaves less patience in the room than speaking first.
• How long do you have, exactly? Ask whether the slot includes your introduction, applause or questions.
• Where will you stand? A lectern with a microphone, a classroom with slides, or a backyard where you will be competing with a grill.

Then name the kind of speech you are giving. Most fall into one of three types, sorted by what you want from the audience, and each type has its own shape.

Write the speech in one sentence

Finish this sentence before you outline anything: "After this speech, the audience will…" The verb sets the ending. "Understand" ends on a takeaway. "Vote," "sign" or "try" ends on a specific request. "Remember" or "laugh" ends on a toast or a tribute.

Then write the core message: the one sentence you would want a listener to repeat in the parking lot. Everything in the draft either supports that sentence or gets cut.

Outline against the clock

Every speech has an opening, a body and a close. The decision is how to order the body, and how many points it can hold. The open textbook Stand Up, Speak Out recommends two main points for speeches under about three minutes and three for most speeches up to ten, because listeners keep fewer points better. If you have five points, two of them are probably support for the other three.

Pick a structure

Past–present–future suits ceremonies because it moves a room from memory to commitment. Abraham Lincoln built the Gettysburg Address on it, and the whole speech runs 272 words in ten sentences. Edward Everett, the main speaker that day, had just talked for about two hours.

Everett wrote to Lincoln the next day that he would be glad if he had come "as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes." Lincoln knew the one idea the day needed and built every sentence around it. More famous speeches, taken apart the same way, are in what writers can learn from famous speeches.

Turn minutes into words

Conversational American English runs at about 150 words a minute, a figure usually credited to the National Center for Voice and Speech. Speeches run slower, because you pause after the big lines and wait for laughs. Plan on 130 to 150 words a minute, then let your own timed read-through overrule the table.

A one-minute speech is closer to an elevator pitch than to a short speech: one point, one example, one ask. Here is the running example, budgeted for four minutes.

The speech outline template has slots for the hook, the thesis, each point's support and story, the transitions and the time budget, with word counts for speeches from two to twenty minutes. If slides are part of the talk, the script also has to say when each one appears. See how to write a presentation script.

Draft the middle first, then the ends

The body holds your material, so write it first. An opening is easier to write once you know what it opens. Give each main point three things:

• The claim, in one sentence you could say without notes.
• Support that makes it true: a figure, an example, or a quotation with its source said aloud ("the city's own audit found…").
• A story that makes it stick: one person, one moment. An audience forgets the 140 families by dessert and remembers Ray at the produce table.

Write the transitions out in full. "That's the problem. Here's what fixes it" tells listeners where they are. A slide change doesn't.

Then the opening. Start inside a moment (a speech can open in medias res as well as a novel can), with a question the room can answer silently, with a number that surprises them, or, in a formal setting, with a plain statement of why you are speaking. Don't start with an apology, a dictionary definition or "Today I'm going to talk about." The guide on how to start a speech has more openings to adapt.

The close does three jobs: it restates the core message in new words, makes the ask or gives the takeaway, and ends on a line you wrote in advance. Often that line answers the opening. Take questions before your final line, never after it, so the last thing the room hears is yours. More on that in how to end a speech.

Write for the ear, not the page

A reader who loses the thread can go back a paragraph. A listener gets one pass, at your speed. That changes how you write:

• One idea per sentence. If you can't say it in one breath, split it. Put the word that matters last, where your voice lands.
• Signpost the route. "Second." "Here's the catch." "So what do we do?" On the page these look clumsy. Out loud they are handrails.
• Repeat on purpose. In ten sentences, Lincoln uses "here" eight times and some form of "dedicate" six times. Say your core message in the opening, echo it in the body and restate it in the close.
• Make numbers human. Round them ("nearly two in five," not "38.6 percent") and attach each one to a person or a place.
• Use contrast and threes. Juxtaposition gives a line its shape: "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." A set of three gives it rhythm: "we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground." For more patterns, see rhetorical devices.
• Sound like yourself. Keep your own tone of voice: contractions, your usual words, the jokes you would make at dinner. When a passage won't come, say it out loud first and write down what you said.

Rehearse out loud, then cut

Most of the second draft happens out loud. Every stumble marks a sentence to rewrite, and every timed run shows what to cut.

Mark up a reading copy

Even if you plan to speak from cards, make a reading copy built for glancing at: large type, wide line spacing, and line breaks where you breathe rather than where the margin falls. Mark a short pause with one slash and a long one with two, and underline the one word per sentence you want to land. Spell hard names the way they sound. Never let a sentence run across a page break, and number the pages.

Saturday. 8:40 in the morning. /
The doors open at nine, /
and the line is already past the bike rack. //

Inside, there are nine of us. //
Nine aprons /
for a hundred and forty families. //

[look up]
I'm not here to ask for more of your Saturdays. /
I'm here to ask for one of your friends. //

1. Read it aloud once, sitting down

   Mark every place you stumble, run out of breath or rephrase without meaning to. Your mouth is telling you the better sentence. Rewrite those lines before you time anything.

2. Time a full run, standing up

   Compare each section with its budget. If you run long, cut a whole example or story rather than trimming words everywhere. One fewer story sounds deliberate. The same words said faster sound rushed. Aim to finish a little under the limit.

3. Record yourself and listen back

   Listen once, without the script. You will hear where the energy drops, which jokes need a beat after them and which sentence still sounds written.

4. Try it on one person

   Pick someone like your audience and ask them afterward what the speech was about. If they can't say your core message back in their own words, fix the draft, not the delivery.

5. Learn the first and last lines by heart

   Those are the moments you most need to look at the room. The rest can stay on the page. For longer stretches, see how to memorize a speech.

Common speech-writing mistakes

• Reading an essay aloud. Nested clauses and "as mentioned above" work on paper and fail in a room.
• Too many points. Seven points in five minutes means none of them gets a story, so none of them is remembered.
• Inside jokes. A story only three people understand tells everyone else they are outsiders. At weddings and retirements, explain the joke or cut it.
• The false ending. "In closing" followed by three more minutes. Once you signal the end, end.
• Never timing it. A draft that feels like three minutes in your head can run five at the microphone.

Drafting a speech in Strokes

Strokes is a desktop editor that keeps documents as files on your own machine. Keep the brief, the research notes and the script in one project. Rehearsals mean cuts, and version history saves versions as you go, so the story you cut on Tuesday is one click away if Thursday's run comes in short.

The AI Assistant can act as a first listener. Add the draft to a chat and ask which sentences are too long to say in one breath, or where a listener would lose track of which point you are on. Select a paragraph and press ⌘K to rewrite it for the ear in place, then read the result aloud before you keep it. A speech has to sound like you, and only you can check that. When the script is final, page view with page numbers and a PDF export give you a reading copy to print.