Recently I found myself explaining to a client what the difference is between your regular average speech that they would write and the professional comedic speech that I will write. Actually, in this case, his self-written speech wasn’t just a theoretical case, he had actually written a draft for himself before he decided to hire a professional writer.
As I told this client, his speech had some charm and a light tone intertwined throughout. It is what you might call “lightly amusing” if an audience really isn’t expecting much (or anything) in the Funny department. Many of the sentences and even paragraphs were earnest and flowery self-compliments with no comedic twist and the “stories” had natural hunor to them, but they were told in a plain, straightforward, drawn out way with no re-focusing to add/create punchlines along the way. My client here is completely normal, and representative of most non-professional writers. Especially non comedic-professional writers. He was having a notable personality and title holder in his town officiate his wedding, and deliver a speech about himself and his bride. He wanted it to be really funny and worthy of the event and the important man delivering it on the couple’s behalf. The smartest move he could’ve made was to hire a professional comedic speech writer. And thankfully, he did!
.jpg "Best Man Speech")
What a pro comedic speech writer will do is mold each line, using precision and efficiency of language, which greatly aid the phenomenon of comedy. The “setups” - the straight, “real” piece of information are relatively quick, and totally TRUE, with the “punchline”, the twist, the payoff, the big laugh line, using some element of comedy writing, be it hyper exaggeration, analogy, comparison, left turn substitution, or what have you. The speech is a series of very sharp jokes- of the level of a Comedy Central or HBO presentation- that adhere to time tested structures of quality joke writing. The speech is poignant, relevant and detailed- because it’s all based on real qualities, quirks and anecdotes of the honorees, but it’s laugh out loud funny, with a rapid pace of punchlines, because it’s the result of years of training and practice in comedic writing. Which is no normal or easy to master skill.
So, next time you want to “crush it”, as we say in the biz, at a public or private event, be smart like this client of mine and hire a proven and tested pro comedic speech writer to do the heavy lifting, so you can kick back and then take in the glory! .
