Speechwriter Shares Her Tricks of the Trade

Harvard’s budding “rhetorical Doctor Frankensteins” learned the tricks of the trade Friday from the first woman chief of the White House speechwriting office.

Institute of Politics (IOP) fellow Chriss A. Winston, President George H. W. Bush’s onetime head speechwriter, took a few dozen undergraduates on a two-hour tutorial about how to “take a colorless, passionless, humorless lump of words and somehow mold that into a speech that has life and lift.”

Having a clear core message—“preferably one with news value”—and conducting thorough research are keys to a successful speech, Winston said. So are personal anecdotes—but “make sure they’re accurate, and don’t exaggerate.” Chuckles greeted her recounting of Al Gore’s botched attempt to appeal to a rural audience by claiming to have once been a farmer.

That said, she added, “don’t be afraid to do something a little unexpected.” A speech’s impact can turn on the writer’s success at what Winston called “floating the balloon”—applying the tools and tricks that “will give a speech life and lift once you have the basic message and theme.” Those strategies range from humor to props, rhetorical devices, poignant quotes, stirring anecdotes, and cultural references.

“You’re rhetorical Doctor Frankensteins,” she told students.

Participants filled the IOP conference room to capacity, diligently scribbling and typing notes. “Demand [for attendance] was very high,” according to special projects coordinator Lawrence D. Arbuthnott ’10. Thirty undergraduates were admitted by lottery. Invitations were also issued to participants in the IOP’s Women’s Initiative in Leadership program, which co-hosted the workshop with the IOP fellows program.

The session showcased Winston’s own skills as a veteran communicator. She shared witty anecdotes (when President George H. W. Bush’s dog had puppies, speechwriters “played them up for all they were worth,” scoring a “puppy bounce” in the polls), incorporated audience-appropriate cultural references (likening her catalog of rhetorical devices to a word list from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”), and took logistical details in stride (making a swift transition from highlighting video clips to asking for audience questions during a technical glitch).

The tutorial “really went into the nitty-gritty, beyond the granular” of speechwriting, said David J. Baron ’07.

It was one of the first IOP events that Baron, a physics and astronomy and astrophysics joint concentrator, had ever attended.

“Some people tend to shy away from the IOP because they think they don’t know everything about politics,” Arbuthnott said. “But this workshop isn’t as political as everything else.”

Though Winston maintained that she “is of the school that speechwriters shouldn’t be seen or heard—they shouldn’t really be out there taking credit for this or that line,” perhaps the biggest message of her workshop was the capacity for influence in her profession.

Great speeches “can move you in some to action, anger, or tears,” Winston explained. “They can move you to change the world.”