Comments on: Saving A Speaker From The Death Sentence

By: Marion Chapsal

Marion Chapsal — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:31:01 +0000

Suddenly I’m afraid my writing is going to sound written in Klingon or by a Jewish mama.
It’s a very tough exercise, to comment in a speech writer’s blog.
You ask yourself: “Is he going to shake his head, bewildered and gaze at the starry night, desperately searching for meaning?”
So, here I am, looking for something funny and intelligent to add.
But you already expressed it, Martin.
Simply brilliant, like a bright and clear summer morning!

By: Livia Blackburne

Livia Blackburne — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:02:59 +0000

Lol, I used to write like a Jewish mama! There’s something about the intimidating task of putting words on a page that make people want to speak unintelligably. I give similar advice to my undergraduates for writing their essays. If their prose just doesn’t make sense, I tell them to pretend to sit someone down (or find a real person), and explain to them in plain english what they’re trying to say. Once they do that, it’s much easier for the message to come out.

By: Martin Shovel

Martin Shovel — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:21:27 +0000

I think I’ll ‘duck’ that question Simon, if you’ll excuse the pun!

By: Simon Lancaster

Simon Lancaster — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:40:12 +0000

Shurely the natural language of the senior civil servant is Mandarin?

By: Jennifer Liston-Smith

Jennifer Liston-Smith — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:21:49 +0000

Hi Martin
I love the concept of pitching this ‘muddled lunacy’ against the infinite magnitude of the universe.
I guess by bringing sentences into meaningful, elegant form, the overarching direction of the speech also emerges. What you put forward is an interesting inversion of what we might have expected: i.e. identifying the five core points being conveyed first, then tidying them into neater sentence form.
Recently hearing a conference keynote speech I recognised the (different) person, quite well-known to me, who had actually been the speechwriter – that’s the other art, isn’t it, how to help the speaker re-craft in their own voice, not yours.