There’s an interesting insight about learning how to make your speeches work by testing them out on people and evaluating.It comes from a New York Article that pays tribute to the speech writer of J. F. Kennedy, Theodore C. Sorensen:
“It was only after we had crisscrossed the country and began to build support at the grass roots, largely unrecognized in Washington, where Kennedy was dismissed as being too young, too Catholic, too little known, too inexperienced,” Mr. Sorensen said in the interview.
In those travels, Mr. Sorensen found his own voice as well as Kennedy’s. “Everything evolved during those three-plus years that we were traveling the country together,” he said. “He became a much better speaker. I became much more equipped to write speeches for him. Day after day after day after day, he’s up there on the platform speaking, and I’m sitting in the audience listening, and I find out what works and what doesn’t, what fits his style.”
Source
Theodore C Sorensen, 82, Kennedy Counselor Dies, New York Times, 31 October 2010.
Geoff Pound
Image: JFK and Theodore C Sorensen: “I find out what works and what doesn’t, what fits his style.”