Speaking Elevated

Category: Speech Writing

  • Start with a Punch: Your Speech’s Hook

    Start with a Punch: Your Speech’s Hook

    Don’t you want your audience to want to hear more from the start? The first few sentences of your speech need to captivate your audience. If you fail to do so, you may lose their attention. You need to use a hook to capture their attention.


    The hook should immediately allow you to reel them into your speech. It solves the problem of convincing your audience why they should care. The hook needs to signal the audience that they will be entertained, that I have a solution to their problem, or that they will gain valuable information.


    To entertain an audience, I started a weight loss speech by stating my old weight and giving the caloric breakdown of my old regular meal. When I graduated high school, I weighed 245 lbs. A normal meal for me was a double cheeseburger, large fries, a large drink, and a drink refill. I also ate part of my dad’s fries and burger. The room was shocked. The audience was in disbelief at my old weight as they looked at my moderate figure. The audience was mine.


    I hooked the audience in a couple of ways. From this point, the audience expected to receive more shock value as I spoke about the challenges of my weight loss journey. If anyone wanted to lose weight, they hoped my speech could help them solve their problem.
    By hooking your audience, you can immediately capture the audience like I did. It’s simple. Ask yourself, “Why should they care?” Once you make them care, it’ll be easier to keep their attention. They’ll be yours.

  • Write Your Speech Introduction Last for Creativity

    Write Your Speech Introduction Last for Creativity

    This might sound insane to you but it’s better to write your introduction at the end of writing your speech. Writing your introduction first makes you take longer to write your speech.


    If you follow my guide for writing an outline, then you’ll already know the direction in which your speech’s story will flow. As you adapt the outline into written paragraphs, more parts of your speech are uncovered. As you write these paragraphs you’ll write new arguments that weren’t in your outline. Each newly added idea or removed will change your speech’s story bit by bit.


    When you finish writing your body, you’ll realize you’ll need to change your introduction. As you write more you’ll realize it always happens. Leave writing your introduction till the end of the process. It’ll make you a faster and more creative writer.

  • The Best Way to Start Writing a Speech

    The Best Way to Start Writing a Speech

    Feeling stuck when you write papers. I know how it feels. When I was in school I disliked writing speeches. It felt like I stared at my paper for an eternity to write something down on my paper. As deadlines drew closer, I had no choice but to write sentences down. As years passed I found the best way to start wasn’t to write paragraphs down. It was to make a bulleted list of ideas and to make an outline.

    Why Outline?

    Outlining lays out all your points on your topic. By writing your points out for a speech that is 10 minutes or under, you’ll find you often have more than enough points for your timespan. Instead of struggling to find content to fill in the time, remove points so you don’t go over time.

    Brainstorming points

    For your outline, the first thing you need to do is list all your points for your topic. Don’t worry about the introduction and conclusion. It’ll be easy to write as the final step. In my speech for cooking Burgers, I created the following list:

    • Meat Selection
    • Meat Preparation
    • Cooking Times
    • Best Cheese
    • Bun Selection
    • Smashburgers vs traditional
    • Burger Toppings
    • Gas vs Charcoal
    • Burger Sides

    That’s a lot of points! 9 to be exact. Each point can take 1-3 minutes easily depending on how much depth I write to each point.

    Find your story

    Now that we have so many points its time to weave a story from them. Some stories I can write are:

    • Focusing on Smashburgers vs Traditional Burgers
    • How to cook a burger
    • Why Smashburgers are better
    • How to cook an amazing Smashburger
    • How to cook the perfect burger
    • Better Ingredients, Better Burgers
    • Different topping combinations create new burger experiences
    • The best cheeses for burgers

    See all the directions I can take my speech. Some are slight alterations of each other. Some stories only focus on one point. By choosing your story you will need to remove and add more points.

    For this speech a PowerPoint presentation will be needed, I will aim for a 6-8 minute presentation, and I will choose the story: How to cook an Amazing Smashburger.

    Write an outline for the story

    Now that we know what direction we want our story to be we can modify the outline for our new direction.

    • Why Smashburgers are better
    • Ingredient choices
    • Cheese Selection
    • Meat Selection
    • Cooking the burger

    That looks good but seeing how we have 6-8 minutes for this presentation, let’s move “cheese” to under ingredient selection. We can also start adding subpoints to each point.

    • Why Smashburgers are better
      • Easier
      • Better taste with Maillard Effect
    • Meat Selection
      • 80/20 Meat
      • .25 – .3 oz optimal patty size
    • Additional Ingredients
      • Brioche Bun
      • American Cheese
      • Your choice of additional toppings
    • Cooking the burger
      • Smash and Season
      • flip after 90 seconds, add cheese
      • wait 30 seconds and remove

    And just like that, we have a body outline for our speech. At this point, the superpower of an outline is shown. You can easily rearrange, add or remove points. It may possibly need some subpoints shortened or removed, but I think the outline looks doable for a 6-8 minute speech.

    Your next steps

    Now that we have our outline for the body, the paragraphs will be practically writing themselves. You’ll know what to talk about and what direction you’re heading. When the body is done it’ll be easy to write an introductory and conclusion as well.

    Outline you’re content first and stalling will be a thing of the past. Watch as your ideas pour onto your paper.