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I’m often asked, “What’s the biggest mistake people make when they write?” The answer? They simply start writing – and fail to do their best thinking first. Here’s a fix: Before you start to write anything, always take a moment to answer these six questions: WHAT is the point? WHO will be interested in this? […]

1. Circle every weak “to be” verb: be, am, is, are, was, were. Rewrite as many as you can using action verbs. 2. Make two sentences out of one long sentence. 3. Circle every pronoun: he, she, it, we, they, them. Which ones confuse? Rewrite those sentences. 4. Highlight every general statement. Which can you replace with something colorful […]

Think about the last time you delivered a Big Hairy Audacious Presentation to your management team, customers, prospects or peers. How did your prep go? Were you awash in so much awesome material – that you had to clamor like crazy for focus? What did you leave in? (But more important: What did you leave […]

Have you ever attended an event with a cadre of amazing speakers – one after the next – that still felt a bit stilted? Disjointed? Disorganized? Even downright awkward? Maybe that’s because the emcee was far less than exceptional. As a speechwriter, speech coach and author, I’ve been asked more than once to emcee professional […]

There we were – stuck in the boardroom on a Tuesday afternoon, three drafts in on a keynote speech – and I’d pretty much wrung all the best stuff out of my executive’s head. He was done. But his speech was not. The holes toward the end were gaping. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. Just […]

Have you ever heard a public speaker say these things? “Look at this chart on the screen. You probably can’t read it, but …” Or how about this? “I’m a numbers guy, so I apologize now if this seems a little complicated.” Or this? “I’ll be throwing a lot of data at you, so get […]

Will your next speech be somewhere far away from home? If so, challenge yourself to find a link to the local region – and mention it early in your remarks to create immediate goodwill with your audience. Here’s how we did it for a European speaker traveling to Atlanta, Ga., for a keynote address to […]

Hammered hard into my head during journalism school was the Write Tight mantra.  Back then paper didn’t stretch; the online world didn’t exist. So your story had to fit the space on the page.  Only seven column inches? Then maybe you had 250 words. Not 300 words. Not 350 words. Just 250. So Write Tight […]

I was interviewing a client for a speech on leadership when he interrupted my latest question and asked, “So what about you? Are you a risk-taker?”  I stopped typing, not often on the end of someone else’s line of questioning. “I guess I haven’t thought about it before. Why do you ask?” “You just set […]

I enjoyed hearing veteran journalist Gene Policinski of the Newseum Institute talk about “The Future of Principles” at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., last month. Policinski, chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute and its First Amendment Center, gave the keynote address at “A Capital Event,” a one-day conference by the American Society […]