One of the best books on speech writing I think is Peggy Noonan's On Speaking Well. She was a presidential speechwriter, now she's a newspaper columnist. One of my favorite sections in the book is where she talks about how politicians and salespeople are always hunting for that one line or hook that's going to make a great speech, that clincher line that's going to bring the audience to tears. She points out that problem with clincher lines is they're often delivered like clincher lines and the audience can feel the manipulation, and they often reject it. She says instead that the most moving thing in the speech isn't the flowery language, the poetry, the pathos. No, she says, the most moving thing in a speech is always the logic. Obviously, I like that. It doesn't mean though, don't have pathos. It doesn't mean only include fact. It means you need to have a solid argument driving your speech, that's what's inherently moving. Stock issues can help you get there, but arrangement is key. When I'm looking at persuasive speeches, I actually don't have a set pattern for writing persuasive speeches. It totally depends on the audience and the setting. Now in some cases, I want the arrangement to be very obvious, and so I'll move to my counter arguments. Now in those cases, I'm going to highlight transitions, I'm going to use those signpost words first, second, so on, so forth. Basically, I really want to put all my cards there on the table. Now in other cases, I think more in terms of build. If it's a friendly audience, I build to the call to action, it feels more like a sermon. I never once mention where I am in the speech, or have a preview or anything like that. Now both types of speeches here have very deliberate arrangement decisions. Both highlight the logic that I hope will move this particular audience. Typically, I want to make sure that the audience can answer these questions. What are the ills? What is to blame? What are the cures and consequences? What can we do to help the cures? Some of these issues, the audience may already know. If so, I don't necessarily have to put them into the speech, that audience knows it. We're going to walk through a few sample arrangement patterns, but you need to make decisions based on your audience. I don't want the audience to miss some core logic of the speech. I want to make sure they can generally answer those four questions. Now, once that we're certain that the logic is solid, then we can start adding moving language to sharpen that argument. [MUSIC]