“Politicians employ speech writers as ventriloquists,” says Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist George Will. But it’s not as easy as it sounds.
By far one of the most difficult aspects working in a political office is writing letters, speeches and remarks in the voice of your employer. It’s a skill that takes a lot of time and effort to get right.
I have worked in my current roll for a little over 18-months, yet the ability to be able to determine what my boss would say in any given circumstance, from a speech to a room of mining executives, to a Q&A with a bushel of primary school students, has taken a not insignificant amount of time, research and consideration; improvement has only come, like with most things in life, with constant repetition and plenty of mistakes.
But there are tricks to help along the way, and while it’s not something that I was taught in Curtin’s PR degree, knowing some of those tricks can be useful. The task of learning to write for someone else is made easier if you have a large group of sample documents at your disposal; which raises the importance of filing all outgoing correspondence and speeches.
When broken down, most people have a practiced and structured writing style they tend to follow consciously or otherwise. For example, a letter might open with a brief paragraph about its content and generally would contain the words: ‘regarding’, ‘in relation to’, ‘enquiry’, or something not too dissimilar.
Following-on some writers get straight to the thrust of the matter while others like to give a rich contextual background for an issue; both options are correct, but whichever option you choose should reflect the personal nuances of the originator (the speaker or sender). In many ways it’s about removing your ego from the equation and putting yourself in the mindset of the other person.
In the case of speeches, most speakers like to use words and phrases they are comfortable with and would use in everyday conversation, and while ‘programatic specificity’ works for some, it doesn't work for others and there is nothing worse than watching a speaker stumble over his/her words (click here for some wonderful examples provided by the comedic talents of George W. Bush); and of course you always need to consider your audience. In any case the key is to review previous examples and pick up on the style, structure and language of the speaker, and recreate those.
This is not creative writing, superfluous language should be avoided. There are however a few important things you should do in any good speech: First, tell people what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told them, this is the key is getting your message across and making sure people remember what you want them to take away from your speech. Always know what you want them to take away.
If you’re being employed to write for someone, that person most likely someone who receives a lot of correspondence or who often does public speaking and like in journalism you can apply a structure to your writing, leaving you more time to focus on the individual words and phrases the originator likes to use, of which there are thousands and the best you can hope for is a constant decrease in the number of changes to your draft each time.
So, that’s my two-cents based on my experiences so far in relation to writing for others. If you've got tips, advice, suggestions, thoughts, queries, qualms, quandaries or questions, don't hesitate to comment below.
Best - Ron
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