A while back, I was writing a speech for a visionary leader.

(To be clear, it wasn’t Martin Luther King… this was 2012!)

It was the first time we’d worked together.

I was having a hard time finding the right “voice” for the leader, one to suit both the topic and the leader’s character — one of those blunt, plain-speaking types.

The leader was truly charismatic. But that came out in the ideas and the values they stood for, not in their vocabulary or the way they spoke.

I was halfway through when they asked me to share the speech, so I shared my draft.

“This language… is too simple,” they said. “Can’t you make it more inspirational?”

“I can make it whatever you want,” I said. “But what does inspirational mean to you?”

They mentioned Martin Luther King – the March on Washington.. John F. Kennedy – the Inauguration… Ronald Reagan – the Berlin Wall…

Three of the most famous and influential speeches of the past century–no false modesty, no undue pressure there. Three speeches, delivered by masters of delivery, blessed with a faultless sense of drama and timing — true performers, who relished their performances, who believed, and lived their message.

But then, thinking about those speeches, something struck me:

I have a dream… Ask not what your country… Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

They were all written in very simple words, talking about very simple (but very high) ideals–making appeals which remain inspirational today. They didn’t just believe in their ideals, they lived their ideals and they embodied them…

My client’s thoughts on the circular economy, for all their topical edginess, weren’t really in the same league.

More to the point, now, my client was misremembering the speeches. In memory, the speeches had become something they weren’t. This often happens with speech more generally – people remember the effect the words have on them, far more than the actual words. And with speeches, especially such iconic speeches, some people think they are full of cute rhetorical tricks, flowery poetic language. Some people think their power comes from some occult power of words — and my client wanted some of that.

But the power of those speeches is in the vision they hold out, in the beliefs and conviction they convey, not in the words used to convey them.

In a speech, words are vehicles for vision, and it’s not what you say that shapes a vision, it’s what you make people see — that’s why getting the voice right is so crucial.

Sometimes, a speechwriter has to prune the words, strip them down to let the vision shine through.

I tried to explain this to my visionary leader–but they stuck to their guns, insisted they wanted a fancier speech. So, to cut a long story short, I gave them what they wanted. I composed a speech full of high-falutin’, flowery, Latinate language, climactic rhythms, telling poetic images. Beautiful in its way, but more of a tired Hollywood scriptwriter’s idea of speechwriting skill.

My visionary leader practised delivering the speech to a couple of colleagues. It fell pretty flat. People were too polite to make it plain, but they weren’t exactly being swept away by the power of the oratory.

The client looked at me and we agreed we had to ditch the flowery stuff. Express the ideas, the vision, the belief, in the simplest way we could.

And so I rewrote the speech.

Now, it is much, much harder to write simply, to cut and edit your words so that they sound like the speech of a real, plain-speaking human being. Like their own, unmediated words.

In the end, when my client made the speech, it went down well. People gathered round to congratulate, saying they’d never heard the ideas come over that powerfully before. They said the words inspired them, opened their eyes to dazzling new possibilities.

Afterwards, we reviewed the event and the speech.

“It went really well,” my client said with a smile. “It looks like I can just talk in my own language. I don’t really need a speechwriter.”

I laughed.

Because words can get in the way of vision. And sometimes, a speechwriter should just get out of the way and let the vision speak as simp]y as it can.