Last night, I ran into a friend of mine who works for our ambassador to the United Nations. Before we’d even said hello, I blurted out, “I need to see a transcript of Qadhafi’s speech.”
I wanted to look at it, not as a policy document, but as a speechwriter. What makes a speech an international disaster?
He had gotten so many requests, that he had it waiting on his blackberry, ready to forward.
Well, start with the word count. Over 11,000 words.
Just for comparison, the Gettysburg Address clocked in at under 270 words. Most state of the union addresses run somewhere in the ballpark of 5,000 words.
Other than a commendation from the Fidel Castro school of oratory, speeches of that length really show a tremendous lack of discipline. And when you’re asked to speak for 15 minutes (as he was), a tremendous lack of respect.
When I’m working on a draft and it gets close to 3,000 word territory, I know I’m pushing the limits of the speaker’s endurance and the audience’s attention span.
But let’s get into the text itself. Qadhafi’s speech actually starts as if it is the product of a sane, rational mind.
This convention comes at the climax of a several challenges that face us all and that the world should unite and make serious efforts to overcome these challenges that constitute the common enemy.
Climate change, financial crisis, collapse of capitalist economy, food and water crisis, desertification, terrorism, immigration, spread of diseases…
Good, good. Common challenges, actual challenges… and then it went off the rails.
Because he started talking about whether man created swine flu.
And talking about the threat posed by submarines.
And telling the US that we should reopen the investigation into the death of Martin Luther King.
And debating the validity of the UN itself. Which, while using the UN as a platform to validate your ranting, is a bit like sawing off the tree branch that you’re on.
The next thing you notice is that the transcriptionist had to resort to using several question mark exclamation point combinations.
Why is that necessary!? You should only be inciting flights of punctuational fancy if you’re a cartoon character.
In seriousness, his train wreck of a speech does remind us of some important things to remember when writing a speech.
- Signpost. Your audience doesn’t know where you’re going with a speech. They don’t have the page in front of them. You need to tell them.
- You only get to say a couple of things. If you try to convey every thought you have, you will convey none of the thoughts you have. Choose the one or two ideas you want to get across.
- There’s nothing wrong with a bold or counterintuitive arguemnt, but use facts and stories to make your points. An argument is different than an assertion. Qadhafi made assertions. Leaders must make arguments, allowing their facts to be scrutinized.
You begin to wonder if this is what happens to dictators. On the plane over, did he tell his subordinates what he was thinking about saying, and fearing for their jobs and lives, they all fumbled all over themselves to telling him how pitch perfect his ideas were?
Or did he not tell them anything at all?
And that’s maybe the final lesson to take from this.
If you’re giving a speech, read it out loud to yourself and a couple of others first. You’d be surprised how much of what you put on paper doesn’t feel right coming out of your mouth.
Oh, and if you’re still reading it when it comes time to actually give the speech, start trimming.
A few weeks ago, in the days of Joe Wilson II vs. the president and Kanye vs. Taylor Swift, I spoke to a college communications class. Having seen so many recent public apologies, one of the students asked me how I’d go about writing a convincing apology for someone.
