‘Punching your speaker should be a last resort’ – this is just one piece of advice you’ll find in my new book, Eloquence – A Treasury of Speechwriting Advice, published by the UK Speechwriters’ Guild.
To put it in a bit of further context, I talk about how being moderately abrasive as a speechwriter can be useful. When interviewing your speaker, they’re often vague about what they want to say. I don’t put it like this in the book, but piss them off and they’ll engage brain. You can always soothe them later.
