The Speech You Don't Want to Give

Somebody has asked you to say a few words. Maybe it is a eulogy for a grandfather, a toast at your best friend's wedding, or a send-off for a colleague retiring after thirty years. You said yes because it is hard to say no, and now there is a quiet dread that arrives every time you think about it.

That dread is normal, and it is not a sign you will do badly. Most people who give these speeches are not speakers. The room is not grading you. It is on your side. Here is a practical way through, from the blank page to the moment you stand up.

Decide how long it should be

The most useful early decision is length, because it settles how much you have to write. For all three kinds of speech, shorter is almost always better.

• For a eulogy, aim for three to five minutes. At a slow, gentle pace of about 120 words a minute, that is roughly 360 to 600 words, and five minutes is the upper limit.
• For a wedding toast, two to three minutes, with four as the outer edge. At about 130 words a minute, two minutes is 260 to 300 words and three is 390 to 450.
• For a retirement speech, three minutes for a tribute to a colleague, up to five if you are the one retiring.

A toast that runs five minutes feels like twenty. A speech that ends while the room still wants more is remembered as a good one. If you have to choose between cutting a joke and cutting a story, keep the story.

To check where you are, paste your draft into the speech length calculator. It turns word count into minutes at a slow, average or brisk pace. It measures straight talking time, so add 15 to 30 seconds for each big laugh or long pause.

Start with material, not sentences

The blank page is intimidating because you are trying to write and judge at the same time. Skip that. Spend twenty minutes making notes before you write a sentence.

Ask yourself things like: When did this person make you laugh? What would they say if they could see this room? What is something small they always did? Write down whatever comes, in no order.

Then circle the one story that makes you laugh or tear up. You are looking for a scene with a beginning, a small surprise and a point. Scenes beat summaries. "She was generous" is a statement. "She once drove forty minutes to bring soup to a person she had met twice" is a person.

If you are unsure whether a story is working, ask a friend or sibling, "Does this make me sound like I'm exaggerating?" The best material is true and a little specific.

A shape that works nearly every time

You do not need a clever structure. Almost every good short speech has the same three parts.

1. An opening line that says who you are and how you know them. Keep it simple, something like "I'm Dana, and I've been Priya's friend since the third grade."
2. One story, maybe two. This is the middle of the speech and most of its weight. Tell it with details, then say what it shows.
3. A turn, then a close. Turn toward the person or the couple or the room, say one sincere thing, and finish. For a toast, finish with the glass in the air. For a eulogy, end on something warm and short.

For a eulogy, our guide how to write a eulogy walks through this gently, with example lines and advice on what to include and what to leave out. For a toast, how to write a wedding toast covers the same ground with a lighter touch. You do not need to be funny. A little laughter can be a relief at a funeral, but a true, kind speech is enough.

Rehearse out loud

Reading a draft in your head tells you almost nothing. Speech is different out loud: sentences that look fine on a page are hard to say, and you will find the spots where you trip.

Read the whole thing aloud with a timer, at the pace you will actually use, not rushing. Then trim until you land at the length you chose. Do this several times over a few days. By the third read you will start to remember the parts, and that is what you want, a familiarity with the speech and not a memorized script.

A few specifics that help:

• Read it standing up, in the clothes you will wear if you can.
• Say it to one person, a friend or a mirror, and ask where they lost interest.
• Mark the pauses you will take after a laugh or a moving line. Write "breathe" in the margin if it helps.
• Log your actual times. If you run longer than you planned, cut now, not at the microphone.

The day itself

The speech is ready. What is left is the part that makes people nervous, so here is some practical advice.

Print it large. Use big type, double spacing and numbered pages. Tiny text on a phone screen makes you stare down. On large-type cue cards or a single sheet with widely spaced lines, you can glance down and back up. For a eulogy in particular, do not rely on memory. Grief can wipe a speech out of your head.

Eat something, and bring water. An empty stomach and a dry mouth make everything harder.

Arrive early and stand where you will speak. See where the microphone is and how the room looks from there. A familiar room is a calmer room.

Slow down. Nerves speed you up, so aim for a pace that feels a little too slow. It will sound just right from the back.

Look up at people. Find a few friendly faces and speak to them. Pausing to look at the room is not a mistake. It is the thing that makes a speech feel like a conversation.

If your voice catches, let it. Stop, take a breath, look at your page, and carry on. In a eulogy, a pause is not a failure. Everyone in the room has been there, and they are waiting for you.

If a joke does not land, keep going. The room has already forgiven you.

If you are the one retiring, or the one being thanked

A retirement speech from the person leaving is a different animal. You are thanking people, and everyone is watching you do it. The same shape applies: a few good stories, real thanks, a look ahead. Keep it to five minutes at the most, since gatherings like these often happen at the end of a workday with cake and coffee. Thank specific people by name, and tell one story that captures the place, and leave the speech about your whole career for another time.

A tool for the rehearsing

When you are working on the timing and the delivery, it helps to have something that does the stopwatch work. Toast is our speech writer for exactly this. It has templates for occasions like a wedding, a retirement, a memorial and a birthday, each with nudges for what that kind of speech usually needs. It shows an estimated speaking time as you write, has a full-screen mirrored teleprompter you can rehearse with at a pace you set, and logs the actual time of every rehearsal. When you are done, it exports large-type cue cards, so on the day you can leave your phone in your pocket.

You do not need an app to give a good speech. A pen, a timer and a few honest evenings of practice will do. But if you would like something to keep the draft, the clock and the rehearsals in one place, try Toast.

The speech you are dreading will take a few minutes of someone's evening and stay in their memory for years. Say the true thing, say it slowly, and sit down.