How I Built My Speech
A behind-the-scenes on speechcraft (speechwriting but without writing it out?)
This past week I got to spend 10 minutes teaching the 20,000+ people who signed up how to tell a unique kind of story:
Short, specific, origin-of-an-idea stories to persuade people and build trust fast.
And since I’ve been getting more requests for the speechcraft side of things ‘round here, today’s love letter is a behind-the-scenes on how I built this 10 minute speech.
First of all, hammock. It’s been gross-hot in LA the last weekish but my husband lovingly set up this hammock between two sycamore trees when we first moved in and it’s almost always shady. When I want to get away from my desk and into flow, I do some yoga and lie in the hammock with a notebook (ideally sans devices, but this time I’d been taking random notes for a week in the Notes app so brought it along). Essential ingredient: zoning out (or is it in), staring at the leaves above, I mean, can you see how the sunlight turns them neon???
SPEECHWRITING
To build any talk or presentation, I begin with 2 questions:
what do they need?
what would be the most fun to talk about?
For the first, it’s always always practicals + permission. ‘Cuz humans. Here the practicals were going to inevitably be some version of what I’ve learned works as a 3-part simple story structure I honed HERE with this article, this one, and our fabu workshop back in the spring (shout out to those of you who were on the call live!!). Have tweaked a bit since (partly by thinking through well-told stories I’ve heard recently, at the DNC and online, and reverse engineering how they got there).
CHEAT SHEET HERE.
The 3-part structure is so simple but start to notice how it’s EVERYWHERE… late night couch convos, TikTok videos, stump speeches, anytime someone honors a tiny-but-massive-for-them moment and what they did next, it’s likely to take this form and it’s YOURS for the taking.
BUT I knew I couldn’t just teach this structure — a few other extremely important things were nudging me, whispering that they needed to get mentioned first or I wasn’t being responsible.
The first was WHY stories are a tool for persuasion. It’s kinda a truism AKA conventional wisdom — ya know, stories amirite. But I’m always suspicious of assumptions we don’t actually turn over, poke at, and smell. So I knew I needed to set us up with the WHY question. And I paid attention as a few answers came up, and resisted the urge to search on the internet for OTHER PEOPLE’S ANSWERS. Why do I tell stories? Why do I know they work so well? What have I learned from coaching a billion folks? And from talking to Liz Minnella to prep the weekend prior :)
I built the opening based on answering those for myself.
The second was specifics… y’all know I’m on the neural entrainment bandwagon. It gets a major shout-out in the final chapter of my book. When we tell stories with JUST ENOUGH specifics, our listeners get images that pop up in their mind BOOM like we’ve bluetooth synced. But if we don’t, they don’t.
And the other extremely important thing is… why might we not tell stories with enough specifics? Why might we not tell stories at all?
This is the permission work. Especially for a gathering that was by design for women.
Because we tend to have totally understandable, hard-earned shit around storytelling.
Growing up, as we have, in a patriarchal society that relies on a tradition of heroism, and stories of heroes, that leave us out.
As I say in the video above: we can critique The Hero’s Journey™ from a safe distance all we want. We are wise. We know this shit. But the reality is, IN THE MOMENT, when we could choose to tell folks a story to illuminate how we think and how much we care and thus get them on our side OR DODGE IT…
We’re much more likely to critique ourself.
And there’s power in naming the thing. Shame dies in the light, as they say.
Besides, one of my absolute fave things to talk about is scruffies, and the mischief of daring ourselves to believe that our quiet, private sparks of revelation MATTER.
Which is already activism.
So then my speech structure emerged: 3 whys (during which I could get in my plug for specifics haha), leading to hero’s journey takedown and permission peptalk, and then the 3 part simple storytelling structure to end.
The big question was: do I tell a story of my own before I share that 3-part structure, as an example, a shorthand I can then reference back to?
Dear gentle reader, in case you’re wondering if SUDDENLY ALL MY OWN DRAMA ABOUT STORYTELLING CAME OUT TO PLAY YES YES IT DID.
I heard in my head, does anyone really need my story? I heard, will it seem like I’m self-absorbed to use my short time on this call to talk about a moment of aha OF MY OWN? I mean, seriously. As I like to say, we’re all in this crap soup together. But what a lovely (har har) opportunity to coach myself as I would anyone on that call.
And as you can see, I did not dodge telling my story.
Delivery
Final note ‘cuz you can’t just craft a speech, you have to actually say it out loud like a person: I practiced saying this structure out loud to myself about 5-10 times day-of. Making sure that I felt the logic in my body — skipping some of the stuff I love to talk about and focussing instead on practicing the fresh transitions. Transitions between central points in our speeches is where the energy dies, the confidence dies, the FUN of getting to tell people shit we care about dies. The kindest thing we can do for ourselves in prepping the content of our speeches once the material is generally ready is to breathe into the “then what” and “then what” generator between our central points, so it’s buzzing.
So that those transitions come ALIVE. So we can show upppppp, conversationally, building the argument, feeling the momentum, letting our eyes twinkle. And maybe not even need to check our notes (though I had them there in case, zero shame). I especially enjoy practicing certain phrases, in lieu of ever writing out a full script.
And I trusted that despite not being able to see anyone, and looking into the little black camera dot on my computer so not even able to see me, y’all were there and loving on me. Trusted that I could invite my weirdest and warmest self in and we’d hold each other. That I could care out loud and love in public with abandon.
And the letters I’ve gotten since then have been SO KIND.
I see you.
And am setting our next HOW TO SHOW UP community Q&A for Thurs Sept 19th at 10a PT/1p ET. Let’s workshop your stories, whether they’re to help persuade voters or to sell folks on any idea at all. Become an all-access member and you’ll get the Zoom link that morning.
Love,
Samara
PS. If it helps, think of a story as a pitch. And a pitch as a story. This gives your stories direction and your pitches a heartbeat.
As I say in this popular workshop that’s available for you:
Pitching gets you yeses, pitching is justice work, pitching makes us all more human.
Building that training (a year ago exactly!) was when I first started thinking through why and how we use stories to persuade. And I have a big announcement coming up about where I get to teach it next — can’t wait till I have the go-ahead to share. Mwa!!