I ran a speechwriting course for a FTSE 100 company yesterday. Someone shared a brilliant writing technique from Quentin Tarantino.

Apparently, Tarantino writes all of his films on an old 1987 word processor using just the second finger of his right hand.

By making the process as difficult as possible, he ensures he creates the best dialogue possible.

As he says, ‘You write, write, write with a pen and you always overwrite. But when you have to translate it to just one finger, a really strong editing process takes over. Basically, if you don’t think this is the bomb, you’re not going to spend time typing the final draft with one finger. So you’re constantly correcting and you actually shrink it down.”

So, I’m thinking of getting rid of the IMac. Perhaps this soft, sleek keyboard isn’t such a good idea…

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Phenomenal speech by Cameron just now. Highly redolent of Blair in 96.

The most powerful line of the speech for me was ’stop treating children like adults and adults like children.’ A instant classic phrase reversal. Like JFK’s ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ Or Mandy Rhys-Davies’ ‘He would, wouldn’t he!’

But the most powerful parts of the speech were for me the sections on character (or ethos, as Aristotle put it), particularly when he spoke about his son. This took enormous courage.

A very minor point, but did he really walk off the stage to a song by EMF, also known as Ecstasy Mother Fuckers?

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