An unusual speechwriting commission

Earlier this year, I blogged about being commissioned to write a 'best men's speech' (a double-act for two speakers). More recently, I was asked to write a speech at very short notice for a client with a significant anniversary less than a week away - and they wanted it all in rhyme!

I welcome these occasional departures from the norm. They are imaginative and make the occasion that little bit different. Obviously, they are not appropriate for every type of event; delivering disastrous, credit crunch company results to your shareholders is probably best done by a single straight man, not a pair of comics while a funeral address in rhyming couplets might just be seen as lacking the necessary solemnity.

But for a light-hearted occasion, such as a wedding, anniversary, birthday or possibly even a leaving party, this can work.

Public Speaking Tip #258: Provided it is not a solemn occasion and no other speaker on the bill is doing the same thing, a short, humorous speech in verse can be very effective. For one thing, it demonstrates a great degree of preparation!

As with all my speechwriting, I collected as much information as possible, set these details out on a Mind Map, noted the humorous ideas as they occurred to me and, when I had enough, started putting the script together.

I can't claim that the scansion was perfect or that the rhyming would win me any poetry prizes but it was a humorous speech in verse and I was pleased that I was able to work in pretty much all the information that had been given to me. I always write a bit more than the client asks for so that they have some choice about what material to include. In this case, the client wanted to speak for less than five minutes (any longer would certainly have been excessive in rhyme, I think!) and there was room for them to omit a verse and still have enough material.

After tweaking the odd couplet, the final version was emailed to this speaker and they sent me a card a few days later thanking me. Apparently the response was 'Great!'

For a written piece like this, you really do need to famialarise yourself with the material even more than with a conventional script. It will also be more acceptable to be seen to be reading rather than working around briefer notes but you must still make regular eye contact with your audience.

Public Speaking Tip #259: A speech in verse needs to be read out rather than memorised or it will look too much like a party piece (even if, for this particular occasion, it is one!) And even though you will be reading it, you need to familiarise yourself with the rhythm of the lines, the scansion and the rhyming.

One further piece of advice I would give concerning a speech like this would be not to inform the audience that it's going to be in rhyme; start off as if you are going to deliver a normal speech. The realisation that it's in verse will gradually dawn on the audience and this will add to the humour.

Public Speaking Tip #260: Don't give away the surprise of an unusual humorous speech - you're doing yourself out of laughs!