SELECTING MATERIAL

So what sorts of things should you say? I’m not ducking the question by answering that, this must be up to you. Every speech is different, every audience is different and every speaker is different. However, there are certain common themes that can be identified in all successful wedding speeches. As we have seen, the bride’s father and the groom must always give them a mixture of material that will at one moment tug at the heartstrings and at the next have them laughing in the aisles; the best man must always stick to light-hearted and upbeat material. The other common themes that emerge are that they all contain sincere, optimistic and entertaining words and they are never boring.

You may already have a pretty good idea of the areas you are going to cover. If so, fine. If not, the best way to recall some humorous or serious episodes involving the bride or groom is to think about one or two of these memory joggers.

Memory joggers
Birthdays	Holidays
Turning points	Christmas
Major decisions	Friends
School	Hobbies
College	Ambitions
First job	Games and toys
Illness	Pets
Influential people	Travel

Pour yourself a drink, take a hot bath or go for a long walk and the memories will come flooding back. Make a note of them before they’re forgotten once again.

Better still, sleep on it. You really will get some of your best ideas this way. Your subconscious mind will take over and will come up with a whole series of interesting and unexpected memories and connections. That’s how Robert Louis Stevenson came up with his plots for Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Once you have recalled a few amusing, poignant and illuminating recollections you will need to think about the best way of putting them across to ensure they have the most humorous or emotional impact on your audience. At this stage work on each anecdote, joke and reminiscence in isolation. We’ll see how you can thread them all together towards the end of this chapter.

USING WORDS TO BE SAID, NOT READ

Most people can write something to be read; few can write something to be said. Indeed, most people are unaware that there is even a difference.

We are used to writing things to be read: by our teachers, our friends, our relatives, our bosses, our subordinates. Such everyday written communication is known as text. What we are not used to doing is speaking our written words out loud. Writing intended to be spoken and heard is known as script.

Every effective speechmaker must recognise that there are very important differences between text and script, namely:

Text	Script
is a journey at the reader’s pace	is a journey at the presenter’s pace
can be re-read, if necessary	is heard once, and once only
can be read in any order.	is heard in the order it is presented.

Therefore you must prepare and present a speech for an audience which cannot listen at its own pace; which cannot ask you to repeat parts it did not hear or understand; and which cannot choose the order in which to consider your words.

We seem subconsciously to understand the best words and phrases and the best order of words and phrases when we speak, but we seem to lose the knack when we write script. Consider how the same sentiment might be conveyed by a writer, first using text and then script:

Text:

The meaning of marriage is not to be found in church services, or in romantic novels or films. We have no right to expect a happy ending. The meaning of marriage is to be found in all the effort that is required to make a marriage succeed. You need to get to know your partner, and thereby to get to know yourself.

Script:

The meaning of marriage isn’t to be found in wedding bells ... it isn’t the stuff of Mills and Boon romances ... there is no happy ever after. No, the meaning of marriage is in the trying and it’s about learning about someone else ... and through that learning about yourself.

The lesson is clear: Speak your words out loud before you commit them to paper. You will find that each element, each phrase, each sentence, will be built from what has gone before. Instinctively, you will take your listeners from the known to the unknown; from the general to the particular, from the present to the future.

As a speechwriter you must:

• think like the listener, and
• write like a talker.

Varying pace

You will need to slow down a little from your normal speaking speed to give your audience time to think about what you are saying. Vary this speed to maintain interest and highlight your most important messages. We will come back to this in Chapter 5.

No replays

Your audience gets just one chance to take in what you are saying. Keep it short and simple, or, as Americans put it: lean and mean. Use an everyday, chatty conversational English because that is the language of easy communication. And easy communication is what speech-making is all about. Advertisers know this, and we can learn a lot from them. This is the script for a TV and radio advert:

Orange believe you shouldn’t be rushed into anything. Which is why we offer a 14-day money-back guarantee. The future’s bright. The future’s Orange.

This is English written to be read out loud. It includes:

• one simple idea
• short words
• short sentences (average 8 words)
• a link (Which is why ...)
• effective repetition (The future’s bright. The future’s Orange)
• a reference to the audience (Orange believe you ...).

It is an example of the kind of style you should adopt when writing your script.

Arranging the order

Arrange your speech in a logical order and always speak your most important words first. If you say:

Jimmy, Ken, Mark, Steve and Ronnie have all beaten Bill at snooker.

Your audience won’t know why you have named all these people until the very last word of your sentence – and by then they will have probably forgotten who you mentioned anyway. For this reason it would be far better to say:

Bill has been beaten at snooker by Jimmy, Ken, Mark, Steve and Ronnie.

Text, script and cue card

The rule is: write your text, transform it to script, reduce it to a cue card with a few memory-jogging keywords and phrases (see Figure 1).

It is important to get your opening and closing lines spot on. For that reason you should memorise them. However, it is far better to simply familiarise yourself with the middle section of your speech. In this way you are sure to come across as a far more natural and spontaneous speaker because you will be using your own words and phrases, not reciting a prepared speech. That’s why cue cards are so useful.

What you must avoid is talking a lot without saying very much. Your aim is to say a great deal with just a few words. Listen to great

raconteurs to see how they do it. Sir Peter Ustinov brought his anecdotes and reminiscences to life, giving them a lyrical, almost magical quality. You can do the same by:

• painting word pictures
• using figurative language
• engaging all the senses
• using symbolism
• remembering rhythm.

PAINTING WORD PICTURES

People today spend more time watching TV or films than listening to the radio. They are used to visual images so you must give your speech a graphic quality not by telling a story, but by painting word pictures that allow your audience’s own imagination to take over.

Specific detail allows an audience to see the scenes you are describing. This means avoiding vague references to food and replacing them With pizzas or kebabs. To say a meal was delicious merely tells them you enjoyed it. Use adjectives that conjure up specific images and trigger the senses: a spicy curry, a fruity jelly, a savoury pudding.

The best writers of popular fiction know they must paint word pictures. This comes from Fallen Curtain by Ruth Rendell:

I loved visiting gran’s. Tea was lovely, fish and chips that gran didn’t fetch from the shop but cooked herself, cream meringues and chocolate eclairs, tinned peaches with evaporated milk, the lot washed down with fizzy lemonade.

Can’t you just feel that gassy pop getting up your nose?

The best way to learn to speak in this way is to visualise the scene you are describing. Be a film director, and tell them exactly what you see as the camera pans around the room, zooming in here and there. People will appreciate such descriptions because it is what they are used to.

Use imagery when you crack a joke too. Don’t tell die gag, paint it:

Soon after we met, Dave invited me to his eighteenth birthday party and he gave me details of his address and how to get there. He said, ‘A number 8 bus will bring you right to my door – 117 Alma Road. Walk up to the front door and press the doorbell with your elbow.’ ‘Why my elbow?’ I asked. ‘Because you’ll have the wine in one hand and my prezzie in die other, won’t you?’

One mental picture is worth a thousand words.

USING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Try to make your speech colourful and original. Similes and metaphors are particularly useful. A simile is a figure of speech, usually introduced by like or as, that compares one thing to another:

She was simmering like a corked volcano.
I am as awkward as a cow on ice.

Because a simile’s function is comparison, it is not as evocative as a metaphor. A metaphor does not so much compare as transform one thing into another:

Adam had laid out four squadrons of flowers that sprouted, mute and soldierly, exactly where he had planted them.

Metaphor is more subtle and more revealing than simile, stimulating imagery beyond the original transformation. Adam’s squadrons of flowers suggest something about Adam himself, evoking military associations and the sense that he is used to getting what he wants.

The right metaphor can really lift a wedding speech. Take a look at this example:

Marriage. Ever since humans gathered together in caves they – we – have displayed a basic instinct for becoming couples. Your man and your woman. Your Romeo and your Juliet. Your ying and your yang. It’s as natural as his and hers bath towels. If the life of humankind were music they would all be duets. It’s been a bit of a musical day one way and another. Violins in harmony with cellos. Carol in harmony with Alan. The past in harmony with the future. And, as the Bard of Avon put it: ‘If music be the food of love, play on’.

And how about this?

With the two of us it is just as it is with the honeysuckle that attaches itself to the hazel tree: when it has wound and attached itself around the trunk, the two can survive together; but if someone tries to separate them, the hazel dies quickly and the honeysuckle with it. Sweet love, so it is with us: you cannot live without me, nor I without you.

That was said by Marie de France over 800 years ago – and it works just as well today. The past in harmony with the present.

Another useful figure of speech is hyperbole, or deliberately overstating your argument:

I’ve told you millions of times not to exaggerate.

In a wedding speech you can get away with saying things that most people would find embarrassing and even crass in everyday conversation:

You are the best parents/son/daughter in the world.

Not only can you get away with it – such bizarre overstatement can be highly effective, bringing a lump to the throat and a tear to the eye:

I’ll love you till the ocean is folded and hung up to dry, and the seven stars go squawking like geese about the sky.

ENGAGING ALL THE SENSES

Sensory details bring breadth and depth to your descriptions. Again, we can learn a lot from writers of popular fiction. This is how Stephen King brought a character to life in Carrie:

Norma led them around the dance floor to their table. She exuded odours of Avon soap, Woolworth’s perfume and Juicy Fruit gum.

I bet you can see Norma. Your vision of her may be different from mine but she’s there all the same, and that’s all that matters.

And how about this from Katherine Mansfield:

Alexander and his friend in a train. Spring ... wet lilac ... spouting rain.

So few words yet the wetness is palpable.

In her autobiography, Walled Gardens, Annabel Davis-Doff shows how a scent can bring back memories of childhood:

Recently, my mother and I were visiting my brother at his house near Dublin and walking through his tiny greenhouse. I reached out to a tomato plant and nipped a shoot between my thumbnail and first finger, the way my father did to prune out the small redundant leafy growths which sprout between the main trunk and branches of the plant. Without showing it to her, I held the strong-smelling leaves close to my mother’s face.

‘What does that remind you of?’ I asked.

‘Grenville,’ she said, without a moment’s pause or any sign of surprise at my question.

It made me feel close to my mother, as though I hadn’t left home so long ago or gone so far away. On a warm July afternoon in Dublin she thinks the same thing, when she catches the scent of tomato plants, that I do in my garden in Connecticut.

As you speak, try to involve your audience. Allow them to do far more than just listen to you. Help them to hear, to see, to smell, to touch, to taste. Allow them to experience your speech.

USING SYMBOLISM

Advertising agencies spend thousands researching symbolism. Let us see what we can learn from them.

Do you remember that TV advert for a car where a rather seductive young lady asks the driver, ‘Wanna show me what it can do?’? They drive off to a beach and embrace across the red bodywork. Then cut to waves coming in and going out. The implication was clear and not very subtle: buy this car and people will want to go to bed with you.

Bah, humbug? Maybe, but it works. You’ll find symbols in all adverts. And the colour red crops up a lot, but usually it’s more subtle, like a red sunset to advertise a liqueur, or a bunch of red roses behind a bottle of scent. Red is warm. It is vibrant, a symbol of passion, excitement and romance. When you want to suggest these things, describe a variety of hot colours, especially red.

The seasons of the year and die weather are potent symbols too. The image of a damp autumn evening is depressing while a warm spring afternoon is associated with new life, new beginnings. Writer Henry James said the two most beautiful words in the English language are summer afternoon because they evoke just the right emotions. Did you notice the reference to a warm July afternoon in Annabel Davis-Doff’s reminiscence? Make use of such powerful symbols in your speech. Go for it. Tug at die heartstrings. Touch the heart:

I took a walk in the park this morning. Every bush, every tree trembled with the flutterings of butterflies – beautiful red butterflies. It was magnificent. Yesterday there were no butterflies in my garden. Today there are thousands. Tomorrow there will be millions.

Using words colourfuUy and creatively will bring the middle of your speech to life like a shot of whisky in a cup of coffee.