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Keep your promise about how much time you’ll take. Running longer than you said you would at the outset shows a lack of discipline.

Presenters often sprout wings and fly when confronted with an audience. They expand, tell anecdotes — and hate to sit down. If what you’ve written is exactly on time in rehearsal, you’ll probably run over in performance. If you’ve been allotted twenty minutes, write for fifteen.

Leave time for questions — the Q and A session lets the audience get to know you better and could tip the decision your way. And prepare for questions. As you’re writing, be alert to your inevitable weak spots. What are the holes in your argument? What alternatives did you consider? If you cannot build the answers into your presentation, be ready to handle them — briefly and respectfully, so the questioner will feel smart to have asked.

Edit — to shorten. Reorganize — to make sure your message is clear. Revise — to make it sound like you, speaking naturally.

Rehearse — always with props. You may think you know how you’re going to handle your charts and other visual materials, but each presentation seems to present problems of its own. If you can, rehearse in the room where the presentation will take place. Go through your entire presentation at least twice. Only an amateur worries about overpreparing and losing an edge. The better you know what you’re doing, the more spontaneous you’ll seem.

Speeches That Make a Point

“You start with trying to figure out what you want to say,” says speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who contributed to many of Ronald Reagan’s most effective speeches. Her experience is that “… it is harder to decide what you want to say than it is to figure out how to say it.”

Most people have a terrible time knowing where to begin in writing a speech. The answer is not to hunt for a great opening. Not to ask around for the latest joke. The place to start is to think about who is in your audience and decide what you want to say to them.

Decide what single point you want them to take away. Then start writing. You can put down anything that gets you into what you want to talk about, no matter how clumsy it seems. There’s time to polish it later. The point is to get rolling.

Immerse yourself in your subject long before you write. Read about it, make notes of lines that might be used, illustrative stories, items in the news that bear upon it. All will help you settle on a theme. The next step is a broad outline, with three or four major points and examples or subpoints under each. (One of the authors now does this on his computer.)

Now’s the time to form a picture of the speaking situation. Is it an after-dinner address, a lecture, a seminar? Are you the only speaker or one of several? Whom do you follow on the program? Will the audience be sleepy? Keep the situation in mind as you write. It will make a difference in what you say as well as in how you say it.

In writing a speech, it helps to think about addressing one individual rather than a faceless audience. What you write should sound exactly like you talking to somebody.

Another trick that often works: Cross out the first several paragraphs. You’ll often find your opening line halfway down the first page. Most of us have a tendency to warm up too long before throwing the pitch.

1. Frame the subject with a point of view

Some cynics maintain that the subliminal title of every speech is “How to Be More Like Me.” While your audience might not look forward to a speech that actually had such a title, good speeches nearly always express a strongly held personal point of view.

H. L. Mencken compared two speeches by President Harding.

The first was on the simple ideals of the Elks: It was a topic close to his heart, and he had thought about it at length. The result was an excellent speech — clear, logical, forceful, and with a touch of wild, romantic beauty. But when, at a public meeting in Washington, he essayed to deliver an oration on the subject of Dante Alighieri, he quickly became so obscure and absurd