Guest Post: Speechwriter, Write

By Michael Long

Those of us who like Americana or alt-country music—country music with rock sensibilities—can be obsessive and last year, boy, were we. All through 2015, the golden boy of Americana, Ryan Adams, teased out the delivery of his new album, except it wasn’t quite a new album. It was going to be a song-for-song remake of one of the biggest records of the decade, Taylor Swift’s pop confection 1989. And Adams wasn’t going to do it ironically. He would sincerely reinterpret Swift’s songs by playing and arranging and singing them as he would his own.

This seemed an odd plan, recasting the dance-pop of Ms. Swift as the grungy guitar-in-the-garage roar of Mr. Adams. Her well-polished pop gems—huge hits such as “Shake It Off” and “Bad Blood”—were hard to imagine as anything but summertime soundtracks and club workouts. Yet when Ryan Adams’ 1989 was released in September 2015, it was clear he had produced something intriguing, very good, and completely his own.

If you somehow hadn’t heard of 1989 by Taylor Swift by the time you heard the Adams version, you would assume this new recording was, as usual, written by Mr. Adams. It sounds like a typical Ryan Adams record. But it wasn't even Mr. Adams' songs. It was written by Taylor Swift—nearly word for word, melody for melody, and chord for chord.

The feelings you get when you hear one of these albums versus the other are absolutely different. How can these recordings be so dissonant in effect when their foundations are the same?

The answer tells us something basic about art that speechwriters ought to remember about their craft. Presentation is, as the old line goes, all about the singer, not the song.

I tell speechwriters to stop writing for the speaker’s “voice.” Get the facts right. Get the organization down. Fuss over the structure. Know the topic. Learn the priorities of the audience and write to them. But don’t spend a second trying to find the so-called voice of the speaker, because personality and style—the fundamental aspects of voice—come out in delivery far more than in words.

Every speaker is unique, and he cannot hide his true nature—the singer, not the song. Give the same speech to two different people and you’ll hear two different speeches, even though the words are the same.

(I did stand-up comedy years ago. When we were starting out and my friends and I would see a comic who was better than we were, we'd say something like, "He could headline even with my act." We were being only a little hyperbolic. The material matters, but great delivery can elevate anything.)

Thus when the cheerleader’s Saturday night of “Shake It Off” is channeled through Ryan Adams, it comes out as the brooding, creepy obsession of a full-grown man. The pop queen’s naïve romantic poses in “Blank Space” emerge as a lonely last hope when Adams turns his delivery down to a whisper and pulls the simple melody through fingerpicked, arpeggiated chords.

As the writer, your best move is to get the content right and to find an effective structure. That’s a matter of intellect, not of following around your client for days making notes about how she uses prepositions. You’re not going to turn a buttoned-down CEO into a bouncing motivational speaker by capturing his “voice” in words. Don't imagine that the qualities of performance arise from filigree on the page. Coaches and writers have very different jobs.


Michael Long is a professional speechwriter, playwright, and writing teacher.
This piece was originally posted on Vital Speeches of the Day.

What's My Job?: Mike Long on "Good Day New York"

Question: What does Mike Long do?

Good Day New York has a recurring segment where a special guest is brought out and the hosts try to guess his or her profession. Last week, someone with a job close to our hearts was tapped to try to stump them—and he did a great job!

When asked if he's a ventriloquist, Mike answered, “No, I’m not, I’m not… Well, I guess metaphorically I am.”

When asked for a clue, he replied coyly, “No one ever says to me, ‘Don’t put words in my mouth!’”

Have you already figured out his job? It took the hosts nearly seven minutes to guess!

Check out the full video below, and then keep reading for a Q&A with Mike.



GG: Was it fun to be on the show? How did it feel to not be “behind the scenes” for a change?
ML: It was exciting and so much fun! I do television once in a while, usually commenting on speeches. It's fun but often sterile, staring alone into a studio camera with the interviewer thousands of miles away. This time it was all about me. Speechwriters don’t get that a lot! The day before the segment, the producer and I planned the bit, so I wrote some potential back-and-forth, we talked about the most well-known events I’d written for so they could pull photos, and I prepared a long list of clues. If you look closely, you can see my notes on the table in front of me.

What kind of feedback or attention have you got since being on the show? 
It’s exploded in my own little circle of social media, which has been great. Plus, within one hour, it generated an intriguing new assignment for me. It also drove up subscriptions to my newsletter (sign up here!), and it put in jeopardy Colbert’s chances of actually getting to his new gig, as I am now on the hunt. (This is extreme sarcasm.)

Are you planning more TV appearances in the future? 
Well, planning them is one thing; getting them is another. But yeah, I'd love to do more, and the odds seem to be on my side. Long ago I did standup, I’m comfortable on camera, and producers seem to find me quick with a funny remark. I’m already working on another gig that I hope will come together before summer. Cross your fingers for me!

Spoiler alert: Mike Long is a speechwriter, author, educator, and award-winning screenwriter and playwright. Find him online here.

10 Must-Have Books for Speechwriters

By Michael Long. 
This article first appeared on Ragan.

Those of us who write for a living know that most books on “how to write” are far more for the benefit of the author than the reader; that is, they are often make-a-buck hardbacks for resourceful authors, dangled before people who prefer to imagine the writer’s life than to indulge in its air-conditioned torment and capriciously timed paydays.

The few “writing” books I find worth my time offer unique supporting material not available on the Internet, and encourage me to think about my work from a new perspective. On that basis, here are ten or so titles that every speechwriter—every writer, actually—can learn from, and even enjoy.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. This comes first because by comparison everything else is mere ornament. Strunk and White provide a lesson in clarity delivered with wit and brevity. You can’t read this and not become a better writer.

Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History by William Safire. This reference is a tour of styles in their eras, yet also a reminder that elements of persuasion and structure are as old as time. That points to the next title...

The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric by Sister Miriam Joseph. Speechwriting as a class or even a course of academic study is a recent phenomenon. Most of us who write speeches landed the job by insisting we could do it, not by studying technique. But speechwriting is in many ways nothing more than a sophisticated application of reasoning and expression. This dense and powerful book (which is enjoying a little renaissance just now) is a detailed tour of the function of language and communication, and the power of precision.

The Political Speechwriter’s Companion by Robert Lehrman. This 2010 textbook is by novelist and former Al Gore speechwriter (and Ragan presenter) Bob Lehrman, who will be giving a few talks at the March Speechwriter’s Conference in Washington, D.C. Forget the title. This is a clear, even joyful guide to the mechanics of all speechwriting, with some down-to-earth direction on wordsmithing on top of it all. Speaking of wordsmithing...

Tunesmith by Jimmy Webb. Essayist Jay Nordlinger quotes an old professor of his:  “You want to write better? See a ballet, listen to a symphony—get some art in you. Get some artistry in your prose.” Just so. Webb is among the most talented and successful songwriters of the last 60 years, and in this book he explains where his memorable turns of phrase come from—and he doesn’t prescribes simply waiting for the muse. Webb talks about poetry and prose in structural terms, and he attaches method to what most of us imagine to be only born-with-it inspiration.

Save the Cat by Blake Snyder. Here’s a book on screenwriting that breaks down modern drama into points of a story, all of which build on the classic idea of tension and release. Snyder’s lesson for speechwriters is that prose gains color and, therefore, power when it exploits dramatic tension. Snyder shows step by step how to create drama in general and tension in particular, among many other lessons that the creative speechwriter will use over and over again.

Speech is performance—a form of acting. Speechwriters who understand this can better balance detail with emotion and will put into proper perspective (and practice!) what ought to be at the center of the craft, which is its often-ignored theatrical aspects. The best mainstream guide to this idea is also a delight to read:  2010’s Theatre by David Mamet, arguably the world’s greatest living playwright. 

A few more to round out the list:  Any joke book on the remainder table at Barnes & Noble is worth your money, because simple jokes are always in demand, and the Internet will lead you to the same few chestnuts over and over. This Day in Business History by Raymond Francis is a splendid collection of anecdotes that are perfect for introducing or illustrating any topic, while Condemned to Repeat It by Wick Allison, Jeremy Adams and Gavin Hambly explores, in essay form, several dozen historical incidents as demonstrations of lessons in business and life.

Finally, Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman explains how the nature of communication is inseparable from its content. Written before the rise of the Internet, its psychological and sociological points are still true (and still disturbing) and important for all speechwriters to know.

A frequent presenter at Ragan conferences, Michael Long is a freelance writer and speechwriter in Washington, D.C., and an adjunct professor teaching writing and public relations at Georgetown University. His website is mikelongonline.com.

Writer Profile: Mike Long

Gotham Ghostwriters knows a lot of writers. In our Writer Profile series, we share some of them with you.

Mike Long is a D.C.-based writer, educator, and dramatist. When he's not writing speeches, he's teaching in the master's program at Georgetown University, where he lectures on speechwriting, PR, and other writing-related matters. He's also often on the road leading seminars on writing, and is working on a textbook on PR writing that will be published by Pearson in 2013. On top of all that, two of his one-act plays—"Hostages" and "Arithmetic for Art Majors"—have been produced by the Players Theatre in Greenwich Village, and his screenplay "How to Save Your Own Life" is currently a semi-finalist in the Vail Film Festival. For even more about Mike, check out his website or find him on Facebook.

What led you to become a writer?

I've loved writing since I was a kid, but I didn't think you could actually make a living doing it, so I pursued science, and followed that career for a decade. As I got out into the world, I discovered that there are all kinds of writers-for-hire out here, a realization that coincided with my growing dissatisfaction with being a systems analyst and programmer. Finding that many speechwriters had the same disparate interests and non-writing education backgrounds as my own, I made friends with some of them, and they opened the door to a career change. I've been ridiculously happy ever since.

What have been some of your favorite projects?

Can't tell ya. That's part of being a ghostwriter: pride in the work has to take the place of public credit. But I can say that I'm especially proud of a couple commencements I wrote for delivery at big-name universities, and I wrote an inaugural address for a governor, which was pretty exciting. Oh—I wrote the liner notes for the DVD release of Jerry Seinfeld's documentary Comedian. That was cool. 

What do you do when you're not writing?

Ha—when I'm not writing for a client, I'm writing for my own amusement; I'm working on more stageplays just now. And I always have a lot of things going on: I like hacking around on the guitar, I'm a computer nerd from way back, I'm a stand-up comedy junkie (I did stand-up, long ago), and lately I enjoy grilling and smoking meats. I suppose the unifying idea behind all of it is that I like learning how to do new things.

What makes a client good to work for?

I appreciate clients who pay well and pay on time. Maybe that's crass, but for a freelancer, it matters. As for the kind of work experience I like, give me someone who trusts me. I want them to call on me because they see that they can give me an assignment, work with me to figure out what it should be, and then I'll go away and work, and bring them back just what they're expecting. A clean experience for all concerned.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Get into this career only if you know for sure that you enjoy the act of writing; don't mistake that for the good feeling of "having written." Writing is work. It's not taxing like digging a ditch, sure, but it does take concentration, patience, and thick skin. Another thing: Be curious. Give yourself permission to investigate anything that interests you. What you furnish your mind with is what comes out on the page. You can't help it. That's how writing works. So if you want to be an interesting writer, be an interesting person. Most of all, be interesting to yourself.