The Speech Only You Can Give, for Weddings, Eulogies and Toasts

The document is called speech, and it holds two lines you've written and deleted four times tonight at the kitchen table. The cursor goes on blinking after the second line, and you stand up in three weeks. Maybe you're the best man or the father of the bride. Maybe it's the toast at your parents' fortieth, or the words at a funeral. You said yes months ago, when the day was far away.

Asking AI to write the speech is tempting, and I'd say don't. A speech by AI isn't cheating.

It's worse than that. You'd have a speech about a person you love with nothing in it that only you could know. A room full of people who know you both will hear that in the first thirty seconds.

What AI can do is the part that's stopping you, which is getting the stories out of your head and into an order.

One rule holds the whole way through. Every story in the speech really happened, and you were there or heard it first-hand. The AI may not invent a story or "improve" one, and the AI will try.

Ask AI for a wedding speech and you'll get a charming story about the groom's disastrous first go at cooking, a story that never happened. You'll also get a line about the bride's laugh that could be about anyone's laugh.

Warm but empty is what AI does by default. Every prompt below tells the AI not to add anything, but watch anyway for a detail you don't recognise.

Tonight, tell AI the stories badly

Pour a glass of something and give it twenty minutes in voice mode, which means talking out loud to the AI instead of typing. You're remembering, and the AI is taking notes.

I'm giving the [best man's speech / eulogy for my dad / toast at my parents' anniversary] in three weeks. I'm going to tell you stories about [them] as they come to me, out of order and badly told. Don't write anything and don't suggest anything. After each story, ask me one follow-up question that gets the detail, such as what they said, what it looked like or what I felt. When I've run dry, ask me what I'd most want the room to know about them that I haven't said yet.

Ramble, because everyone knows the first three stories. The seventh is the one that makes the room go quiet, and you only reach the seventh by going through the first six.

Those follow-up questions turn a line like "he was always late" into "he was forty minutes late to his own stag do and arrived with a kebab for everyone". The second version is the speech.

Usually the last question, about what you haven't said yet, gives you the ending. Write that ending down yourself, now, before anything tidies it.

For a eulogy, which is a speech at a funeral, do this with someone else in the room who loved them too, because grief makes you forget. A brother, sister or old friend will hand you the story you'd lost, while the AI takes the notes.

Later that week, the shape and then the writing

From the stories I told you, suggest an order for a [four-minute] speech. Say which story to open with, which two or three to keep, which to cut, and which is the ending. Use only what I said. Don't write the speech. Give me the running order as a list, with one line each on why that story goes there. Then tell me the one story that's funnier or warmer in my own words than it would be tidied up, so I know to leave it alone.

What comes back is a shape. For example, you might open on the kebab and close on the quiet one, with two stories in between. The stories inside that shape are still in your voice, because nobody rewrote them.

Then write the speech yourself from the running order, in one sitting, using the words you'd use at the pub. Aim for a speech that sounds like you, and let "good" look after itself.

If you need a link between two stories, ask for three options and take the plainest. If you need a first line, it's almost always the first story, started.

The last week, say it, cut it, say it again

Stand up in the kitchen and say the speech to the kettle, timing yourself on your phone. Then use this.

Here's my draft. I've just read it aloud and it took [six] minutes. I need it to be [four]. Tell me which bits a listener would lose interest in, and which story I could drop without losing the shape. Don't rewrite any sentences. Mark the ones you'd cut and say why. Also flag anything that might land badly in the room. For example, an in-joke only three people get, a story that embarrasses someone who isn't the subject, or anything about an ex.

That last instruction in the prompt has saved more speeches than any amount of polish. So cut what the AI marks, if you agree, and say the speech to the kettle again. Mind you, the AI doesn't know the room.

A joke the AI passes may be the one your aunt won't forgive, and you know your aunt.

Three readings is enough, because after that you start smoothing out the bits that sound like you. Those are the bits that'll make your mum cry, and that's the job.

If the speech has come out smooth anyway, roughen it, because a speech that's too polished sounds borrowed.

A eulogy can be shorter than you fear, since it needs only three true things and the courage to stop. If you have the quiet story and one line about what they'd say if they could see the room, you've got enough. Ask the AI whether the speech is already enough, and then trust the answer.

On the day

Look up from the paper and find the person you're talking about. If it's a funeral and you can't get through the speech, that's allowed, so give the paper to someone and let them finish. The room will understand better than you think.

Before bed tonight, open voice mode and tell AI one story about them, badly.