Fame! My piece on Speechwriting and Spontaneity has been picked up by leading US speechwritings experts Inkwell Strategies:

The crux of Crawford’s argument is that speakers and their audiences value authenticity above all else. The best way to achieve that, he says, is to craft a speech in a way that conforms to the natural rhythm and flow of spoken word by speaking it in the first place.

Although Crawford takes it much further than we do, this philosophy is nothing new to Inkwell Strategies. In the past we’ve said that a speechwriter should forget what he or she is taught in English class, substituting verbalization for grammatical minutia.

Regardless of how it’s accomplished, every speaker’s ultimate goal is to make the audience forget that his or her words are scripted and immerse themselves in the speech’s message. Crawford’s biggest false assumption is that writing a speech instead of crafting it out loud necessarily diminishes the speaker’s authenticity. No matter how a speechwriter produces a speech, he or she must collaborate effectively with the speaker to create a message he or she can say with credibility and authority. For many, writing is the best way to express that message clearly.

Still, his principles are solid. Whatever method a speechwriter uses should in no way resemble traditional writing techniques. In this profession, sounding good always trumps writing well.

Haha, I like the idea of my ‘biggest’ false assumption. How many were there? I have given them a comment (emphasis added):

In the time and space available to me I was unable to elaborate the argument 100%. You’re right that writing a draft speech (as opposed to dictating it to a stenographer or a computer) need not diminish the speaker’s eventual authenticity.

I’m saying something subtly different. That first dictating a speech text is likely to produce words which somehow sound better – more direct and energetic – because those very words have been spoken in the first place…

Bottom line: the speaker indeed has to engage with the speechwriter to get optimum results. Which all too often does not happen here in Europe. And if it does happen the speaker may not welcome being told that being an effective communicator is not so much about words but rather her/his personal style.

At some point the problem spirals off into something more like therapy than smart drafting…