Sunday, July 24, 2005
Openings & Adrenaline
They shoot the white girl first" has been recognized by many as one of the great opening lines in late 20th century llterature. It comes from Toni Morrison's grand novel "Paradise." I defy anyone to read that line - and not want to find out how the next paragraphs and pages play out.
As speechwriters we always have to concern iourselves with finding great openings for our clients' events. We want to give them words that will give their audiences reassurance that they aren't just about to waste the next twenty minutes of their lives. Rather, they settle down and wait expectantly for the what your speaker is going to say next.
So where or how do we find great openings? Well you could do worse than looking to great literature as a guide.
Of course, the best openings from our own imaginations - or that of our clients.
Second best come from stories - found, made up, or from real life. People love stories and they are what you should always be trying to cajole out of your clients. Even if you simply started with a speech with the line "I want to tell you a story", you have an automatic buy-in from the audience to pay attention to what comes next.
The minute a client gets my commitment to write a speech - the brain cellss start to twitch as I immediately begin to think of possible openings for the speech - even before I know a thing about message or motive.
No matter how much or how little I know about the topic - I begin to think of exactly that. How much do I know about the topic? It helps if you are a news junkie because if you are - you automatically become at least marginally well-informed about almost any topic under the sun. I do mean marginally, but at least it's a starting point.
Newspapers can give you opening lines. Interesting facts. Anecdotes. News about the competition. News about an industry. About government policy. Public mood. The economy. Science. Lilfe. The stuff of life is in the news. Soak it up like a sponge.
And of course the Internet and Google have become our new best friends for triggering ideas that help us come up with openings that have staying power.
By the way, you want to know the line following "They shoot the white girl first.?" It's
"With the rest they can take their time."
Makes you want to go right out and get the book, doesn't it?
Adrenaline Junkies
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I have come to the conclusion that most freelance writers - and perhaps especially freelance speech writers most of all - are adrenaline junkies. We love the chase of getting work, of having gotten work done, and yes even doing the work.
And we whine and moan about the stress of too many clients and too many competing deadlines.
But just let that phone stop ringing for more than a week or two and we go through a type of withdrawal. Instead of luxuriating in our downtime, we have this nagging sense of unease. It's not usually a worry about money, or that our clients are going to disappear - that's the natural anxiety of all freelancers.
Rather - it's an unifferentiated sense of angst - brought on by actually missing those deadlines we love to curse and complain about. Those deadlines may exhaust us but they energize us as well.
We get hooked on this quite strange ying and yang of a process we love and hate at the same time. Sort of like a drug. Or adrenaline. We miss it when it's gone.
