There are three rules for writing a speech - but no one really knows what they are

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been reading Anna Quindlen’s 2022 book, Write for Your Life. A section starting on page 169 is titled Conjugate. On page 182 she says:

 

“Or there’s this observation, most often credited to W. Somerset Maugham: ‘There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.’  “

 

The she remarks that her piece of direction to everyone who wants to write is just to put your butt in a chair, and write - a word, then another, and another after that.

 

I think similar advice (the tongue-in cheek title for this blog post) is all we can say about speechwriting. An article by Sydne Saccone at LinkedIn Pulse on April 21, 2021 titled My last piano lesson instead repeated, via paragraph titles, the tired Three Rules cliché:

 

Tell them what you’re going to tell [them], Tell them, Then tell them what you told them

 

That alleged W. Somerset Maugham (1874 to 1965) quote about writing a novel has a very curious history. At Quote Investigator on May 6, 2013 there is an article by Garson O’Toole titled There Are Three Rules for the Writing of a Novel. He says it first posthumously (and suspiciously) appeared in 1977 in a book by Ralph Daigh titled Maybe You Should Write A Book. I found it showed up later on page 220 in a 2006 book by R. Keith Sawyer titled Explaining Creativity.  Mr. Sawyer said he got it from a 1996 book by Robert Byrne titled The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said, where it is quotation number 1,764 (also in the 1982 edition).

 

The three columns were adapted from a drawing by Pearson Scott Foresman at Wikimedia Commons.