This document provides tips for writing and delivering better speeches and presentations. It discusses planning speeches by making them into stories with characters, arguments, and ensuring they answer the question "so what?". It also offers advice on avoiding writer's block by keeping multiple documents open and using placeholders. Finally, it lists grammar rules to follow and preparation tips for delivery, such as adding pronunciation guides and formatting cues.

1. 37 Practical Tips for
Writing (& Speaking)
Better
(selected draft slides)

2. Planning a kick-ass speech
1. Kick-ass speeches are stories.
● Stories have beginnings, middles, and endings.
● Stories have characters with whom the audience can identify.
● Stories have a sense of momentum and inevitability.
2. Kick-ass speeches are arguments.
● The success of your argument should have consequences.
● The opponents of your argument should be real, and serious.
● The content of your argument should be surprising and counterintuitive.
3. Kick-ass speeches answer this question (because kick-ass writers
make sure to ask themselves this question):
"SO WHAT?"

3. Avoiding writer's block
9. Don't crowd your draft -- keep three other "bucket" documents open.
10. TK: The two-letter get-out-of-jail-free card.
11. Always park on the downhill.
OUTLINE
I. Plan!
II. Write!
III. Edit!
IV. Rehearse!
V. Deliver!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sources, quotes,
links, clips,
anything that isn't
your own words...
CUTFILE
Half-finished
ideas, material
that doesn't fit,
sketches, and
other detritus that
you don't want in
the draft (yet)...
DRAFT

4. Five grammar rules to remember
18. Sentences have subjects and verbs (and only then maybe other stuff).
19. Great speakers use active voice. Passive voice is used by bad
speakers.
20. Don't dangle your modifiers. #nsfw
21. Watch out for "empty calorie" words.
22. Don't write boringly: Adverbs aren't worth it (usually).
(and one more...)
23. Grammar rules aren't laws, they're recipes.

5. Preparing your speech for delivery
29. Add "pronouncers" [pro-nown-sirs] for difficult words and proper
nouns.
30. Don't be afraid to add markings [PAUSE] so that you remember [LOOK
UP] to emphasize the right words.
31. Keep paragraphs (and especially sentences) on the same page.
32. Waste paper: Don't use the bottom third of the page, so that this
doesn't happen:
33. Make a "zoomed-out" version on index cards.