Most speeches plod. All of the parts are there, tied together competently, and yet the end result has all the verve and vitality of a Clydesdale pulling a heavy wagon. They get the job done, but that’s about it. Most speakers plod too, but that’s a point for another time.
What is it that makes a speaking script come alive? It’s not a big vocabulary. In fact, that is often a part of the problem. Nor is it any of the other skills you learned, or more often, failed to learn in high school English class. Good writing comes from three things; clear thinking, linguistic flexibility and an ear for the music.
Clear thinking means knowing what exactly you are trying to say. That sounds easy, but it is deceptively difficult to do. In fact, most of us use our language abilities far more often to hide our lack of clear thinking than we do to explain what we mean. Elegant simplicity in thought or language is a rare commodity.
Linguistic flexibility is the ability to take a clear thought and mentally work through the many different ways of expressing it, fitting the pieces together like a verbal jigsaw puzzle until the entire train of thought clicks into a cohesive and coherent whole. It’s what a visual artist does with an image or a musician with a string of sounds; spin and twist it in their minds, until the parts fit together just right.
As for the music, that one I can’t explain, any more than I can explain the genius of Mozart, Frank Sinatra or Elton John. The world is full of skilled musicians, but it’s the ear for the music that makes a skilled musician transcendent.
Some writers have that same ear for the music of language. Most of us don’t. Yet we can still aspire to the first two, and that’s enough to make us more competent than the vast majority of people who put pen to paper.
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