Wrestling Writer's Block and the First Draft

Speech Preparation Series

How to Prepare Your

Presentation

1.

Select Your Speech Topic2.

Plan Your Speech Outline3.

Writing Your First Draft4.

Editing Your Speech5.

Add Speech Impact with

Rhetorical Devices

6.

Staging, Gestures, and Vocal

Variety

7.

Practicing Your Presentation8.

Self-Critique: Preparation for

Next Time

9.

Winning a Toastmasters

Speech Contest

10.

Article Category: Speechwriting

Speech Preparation #4: Wrestling WritersBlock to Write the First Draftby Andrew Dlugan

Writers block is debilitating.

Writers block is discouraging.

Writers block stops average speakers from

becoming great speakers.

Dont let it stop you!

The previous article in the Speech Preparation

Series gave tips for writing a speech outline.

This article shows you how to wrestle writers

block by transitioning from a speech outline to the

first draft.

How to Write the First Draft of a

Speech

First, recognize the two most common causes for

writers block, in the context of speech writing:

Lack of Direction: You lack clarity about what you

want to say.

1.

Large Ego: You believe the first draft must be a

perfect speech.

2.

The first cause lack of direction is easily avoidable if

you are following the steps recommended in this article

series. Previous articles have covered how to how to select your speech topic and core

message through audience analysis, and how to craft a high-level outline. With your core

message as your target, and your outline providing a blueprint, writing the first draft

is within grasp because you know which direction to head.

The second cause large ego manifests itself by causing you to edit every sentence

the minute youve written it in the hopes of producing a perfect speech on the first try.

Speech Preparation: Wrestling Writer's Block and the First Draft http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/speech-preparation-4-first-draft-writers-block/

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Writers block stops average speakers

from becoming great speakers.

You will probably hate the first draft.

Thats good. Channel that hatred into

aggressive editing later.

Even worse, perhaps you are editing and striking sentences in your head! This slows the

speechwriting process like molasses flowing on a winters day.

Realize that the first draft is not the

final draft it need not be perfect. You

will probably hate the first draft. Thats

good. Channel that hatred into aggressive

editing later. Your goal in this stage is to

capture the main concepts and ideas, not to

have them in deliverable form.

Tips for Writing the First Draft

Writing the first draft used to be the most painful part of speech preparation for me. You

can ease the pain with these mental tricks:

Set a deadline. If you know your core message and you have an outline, theres

no reason why you cant produce a rough first draft in a single sitting. A deadline

is motivational magic.

Write in bullet form. Write in sentences if you can, but if sentences arent

flowing from your mind, then start with key words or phrases in bullet form.

Write out of sequence. You dont need to write the blocks of your speech in

the order they appear on the outline. Quite often, speakers get hung up on

trying to write the perfect opening. If the opening isnt coming to you, start with

a section in the body of the speech.

Dont worry about transitions. If your first draft doesnt flow from one outline

point to the next, dont worry. Those can be fixed later. Often, my first draft

contains notes to myself like this: [Whoa... need bridging between these

ideas.]

Dont worry about words. Just get the ideas down using whatever words first

come to you. You can edit for precision and better words later.

Dont worry about the length. Its okay if your first draft is way too long. (Its

also okay if it is way too short, although most people dont tend to have this

problem.) This is an issue to solve in the editing phase.

My Speech has Slides. What is a Good First Draft?

If you adopt the advice in Presentation Zen

(my book review) or Beyond Bullet Points,

then dont worry about slides in your

first draft at all. Focus on drafting the oral

component of your speech first. The slides,

which are complementary, can be


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designed later. This is the process I recommend.

However, everyone has different habits, and if yours involve working on slides early in

the process, then do what works for you. Keep these tips in mind:

Dont get too detailed. A good first draft slide might include a few words (a

title, or maybe a quotation) along with a sketch of a figure (or a table, or chart,

or some other visual component).

Go low-tech. You can produce your entire first draft of slides on paper, or sticky

notes, or on a whiteboard. Theres no need to tempt yourself with all the

whizbang features of PowerPoint or KeyNote at this stage.

Avoid the temptation to perfect the slides. Dont worry about detailed

drawings, or colors, or font sizes, or any other design criteria. Leave that for the

next iteration.

Slides alone are not a first draft. Produce a first draft of the oral component

of your speech along with the slides. Producing a parallel written speech will help

you avoid the temptation to insert all those words onto slides. Audiences hate

reading text-heavy slides.

First Draft Example Face the Wind

Here is the first written draft for my 2007 contest speech Face

the Wind. This draft is more polished than the first draft of most

speeches I write for two reasons:

The core message for the speech was ruminating in my

mind for several months.

Though this is the first written draft, I drafted it virtually

while commuting to and from work over several days.

However, as well see in later articles, this draft bears little

resemblance to the final draft.

Note that the draft headings correspond with the outline elements.

Hook / OpeningMister Contest Chair, Fellow Toastmasters and guestsA year and a half ago, my wife and I traded our condo keys for house keys. Our floor space doubled, but there were two much larger changes. First,our mortgage jumped from something quite manageable to something which scares me considerably. Second, the few hours that I onceaffectionately called free time became known as yard work. Yard work is a bit like working at MDA for me. I dont have any clue what I should bedoing half the time, but somehow I always end up being terribly busy.

Japanese Maple TreeThe first big project I tackled was to take care of numerous bushes and trees that were either dead or located in places where my wife didnt wantthem. Most of this involved pulling dried sticks out of the earth. The Japanese maple tree was a bit differentit had leaves! So, rather than chop it out,we decided to move it to a prominent spot in the front yard.The two most common causes for speechwriters block are lack of direction and large ego.

The tree was only seven feet tall. I quickly estimated that I would be done in time to enjoy a mid-morning lemonade. I started digging a hole around thetree about two feet in diameter. Unfortunately, the roots seemed to extend beyond that. I extended the hole to three feet no luck. Four feet. No luck!After a few hours of digging, I had a moat around the tree, several feet wide and deep.


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I exposed all the roots that I could see, and pulled on the trunk.When the tree didnt pop out of the hole, I tugged harder. Tugs turned to yanks yanksturned into full-fledged wrestling. Yes, when nobody is looking, this is what I do in my back yard wrestle trees! Eventually, the tree took pity on meand fell over. I then discovered the source of the trees strength roots as expansive as its branches! Strong roots strong tree.Planting it in the front yard was quite a bit easier. As I gazed up, exhausted, my eye was drawn to my neighbours yard. Specifically, the fifty-footmonster tree in my neighbours yard looming over my garage. I put on my engineering cap, and walked a few houses down the street so I could get agood perspective. No doubt about it that tree would easily crush my garage if it ever toppled over. Good thing trees have such strong roots.

StormMany months later, the yard work mercifully ended with the rainy season. Or, perhaps I should call it the wind storm and snow season. During the firstbig wind storm, I was in Quebec on a business trip. I flipped on the news, and was amazed to see footage from BC on the national news gigantictrees falling to the ground and on buildings.Terror flashed before me could my neighbours monster tree be toppled by the wind? I called my wife. She reported that the gas BBQ had beenlifted off the deck and slammed into the house. However, the monster tree stood tall, and only a few of its branches littered my yard.Yet, the television footage was real. This hit home when my wife and I were driving through Stanley Park some weeks later. It was impossible toimagine how so many trees could be knocked over.A theory was put forth by several arborists in Greater Vancouver. Perhaps it was not the force of the wind alone. Rather, it was the force combinedwith the direction. Apparently, the wind storms of 2006 came from an unusual direction. Each time the wind blows, trees become stronger as theyresist it. But, since these trees had never had to face a strong wind from this particular direction, they were side-swiped and unable to cope.In case you were wondering my Japanese maple tree was hardly touched by the wind.

MaximusThe events of this past week reminded me of the importance of facing the wind head-on.Over the past few years, my sister-in-law Michelle and her husband Lance have had a pair of pregnancies cut short by miscarriage. This wasobviously heartbreaking, but Michelle and Lance have strong roots. When the wind came, not once, but twice, they faced the wind head on, and didnot let it topple them or their dream.On Sunday night, a phone call a few minutes shy of midnight announced the birth of their son, Maximus. The name is Latin for greatest, and hecertainly is a great joy. However, Maximus was born a full month premature, and so he is confined to an incubator. It seems he still needs to face thewind a little longer but his roots are strong, so Im confident he wont be toppled.

ConclusionFellow Toastmasters, we cant control when the wind comes, how powerful it is, or its direction. However, we can control our response to it. We cantry to evade it, and risk being side-swiped or we can face the wind head-on.Mister Contest Chair

Next in the Speech Preparation Series

The next article in the Speech Preparation Series discusses six power principles for

speech editing. Youll see these principles were applied to transform Face the Wind as

well.


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Wrestling Writer's Block and the First Draft