Lessons in storytelling from Jon Favreau - Barack Obama’s speechwriter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three lessons are described by Jonathan Edward Favreau in his BKB lecture given in Amsterdam on September 14, 2014:

 

“Now, when I first started speechwriting, I would always start by asking myself, ‘What’s the clever line? What’s the snappy soundbite? What’s the most unique, catchy, memorable thing I can write?’

 

The President taught me that really, those are the wrong questions to ask, and trying too hard to answer them can produce writing that sounds forced, artificial, and too cute by half. If you’re only focused on lines and soundbites, you can easily miss the forest for the trees.

 

The correct first question to ask is, ‘What’s the story I’m trying to tell?’ I’m not talking about the interesting anecdotes we often use to humanize a speech – though those are important too. I’m talking about knowing your central theme and core message. I’m talking about building a speech with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Whether you’re into outlines or not – and I’m not – you should always be able to sum up your entire speech in a few very conversational sentences before you start writing it. And later, if you find yourself adding words that don’t directly build on that initial, central summary, go ahead and delete them.

 

So that’s the first lesson I learned from the President – the importance of telling a short, simple, compelling story about what you want to say.

 

The second valuable lesson I learned from the President was about the importance of honesty and authenticity in writing and communications.

 

….And this brings me to the final major lesson I learned from the President – storytelling is fundamentally about maintaining your idealism.”   

 

Another five topic headings are described by Steve Seager in an excellent article at Medium on June 1, 2017 titled How to Become a Better Storyteller: Tips from Obama’s Speechwriter, Unpacked. They also are in a .pdf at with the same title at Storywise:

 

Outcome first, words last

Structure a logical argument

Test your argument from your audience’s point of view

Use their language, not yours

And so, to Storytelling

 

There is a 2021 HBO documentary series titled Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union. For it there is a long interview of Jon Favreau with the Kunhardt Film Foundation, that can be read here as a 29-page .pdf file.

 

An image of a man with a laptop computer was adapted from Openclipart.