Eulogy Structure: The 5 Parts and What Goes in Each

A eulogy has five parts: who you are, who they were, one or two real stories, what they left behind, and a last line. Most run 3 to 5 minutes, about 500 to 750 words, which is roughly 100 to 150 words a part. Fill the parts in order and the speech is written.

You are probably not looking for a theory of eulogies. There is a funeral this week, there is a blank page, and someone asked you to say a few words about your mother or your friend or the man you worked next to for nineteen years.

The page stays blank for a reason, and it is almost never a shortage of love or memory. It is that you are trying to write a whole speech in one go. A structure fixes that. It breaks one impossible task into five small ones, and each of the five has an obvious first sentence.

Below is the five part shape with real sentences dropped into every slot, then two complete eulogies built on it, then three other structures in case the five part one does not suit the person who died.

What are the five parts of a eulogy?

The five parts are the opening, the portrait, the stories, what they left behind, and the last line. Write them in that order, hold each one to the word count below, and you will land between 500 and 750 words without counting as you go.

1. Who you are and how you knew them. 50 to 75 words.
2. Who they were, in one short portrait. 100 to 150 words.
3. One or two stories, told properly. 200 to 300 words.
4. What they left behind. 75 to 125 words.
5. The last line. 15 to 40 words.

The point of the word counts is not tidiness. It is that the stories are more than a third of the speech, and most first drafts get that backwards: four minutes of general praise and twenty seconds of the one thing people will actually remember.

Part 1. Who you are and how you knew them (50 to 75 words)

Say your name, your relationship to the person who died, and one line that tells the room why you are the one standing up. Then stop. People are still settling into their seats, this is the part they need least, and the sooner you get off yourself and onto them the better. If the first line is the thing stopping you, there is more on how to start a eulogy without freezing.

"I'm Dani. Margaret was my mother. I had forty-one years of her, which is a lot and nowhere near enough, and she told me once that no speech should run past five minutes, so I will try to behave."

"My name is Tom. I worked alongside Raj for nineteen years. His family asked me to speak for the part of his life they only ever heard about at dinner."

"I'm Alice, Peter's youngest sister. There were four of us. I'm the one who followed him around for most of the 1970s and never really stopped."

Part 2. Who they were, in one short portrait (100 to 150 words)

Give the room three specific things instead of three adjectives. "Generous" is an adjective and it dissolves the moment you say it. "Kept a spare twenty in the glovebox in case someone at the petrol station was short" is a specific thing, and it does the work of the adjective and more. Pick one detail only you would know, one habit everyone in the room will recognise, and one fact that places them in a life: the job, the town, the fifty-eight years of marriage. If you are stuck on which facts belong here, what to include in a eulogy goes through it in more detail.

"Margaret was a nurse for thirty-four years, almost all of it on nights. She came home at seven in the morning, made us breakfast, and slept while we were at school. She could not sit through a film without falling asleep and she never once admitted it. She read the end of every book first. She said it was so she knew whether to get attached."

"Raj ran the warehouse. He knew where everything was without a system and refused to write one down, which drove three managers out of the business. He brought in sweets on Fridays. He asked about your mother by name, every time, for nineteen years."

Part 3. One or two stories, told properly (200 to 300 words)

This is the part of the eulogy people will still have next year, so give it the most room. One story told properly beats four mentioned in passing. Told properly means it has a place, a time, at least one other person in it, and something that actually happens.

Two stories is the usual maximum. If you pick two, make them do different jobs: one that shows what they were like with other people, one that shows what they were like when no one was watching.

"In 1994 our car died on the A1 outside Grantham, in February, with three children in the back. Dad had no breakdown cover because breakdown cover was for people who did not know how an engine worked. He got out, lifted the bonnet, looked at it for a long time, and then walked two miles to a phone box and called a man named Gordon he had met once at a wedding. Gordon came. Gordon towed us home. We had dinner with Gordon and his wife every Christmas for the next eleven years. That was the whole of my father in one evening. He would not pay for a service he could do himself, he could not actually do it, and somehow a stranger became family by the end of the night."

"The other thing I want to say about him is smaller. Every Sunday for the last six years of her life he drove to his mother's house and cut her toenails, because she could not reach and would not let a nurse do it. He never mentioned it. I found out from a neighbour. He was not a man who talked about being good. He just turned up on Sundays."

Part 4. What they left behind (75 to 125 words)

Name what is still here. The honest version of this part is concrete, not cosmic: a habit his children now have, the way she answered the phone that her grandchildren copy, a hundred and ten apprentices he trained, the fact that nobody in this family can throw away a jar.

Avoid the sentence that says they will live on in our hearts. Everybody says it and nobody hears it. Point at something in the room instead.

"There are four of us and we all read the end of books first. None of us decided to. I did not know it was strange until my husband caught me doing it."

"He trained roughly a hundred and ten apprentices. Six of them are sitting in this church. Two of them run their own firms now and both of them still call it the right way and the Ken way, as if those are different things."

"She left a recipe book with no measurements in it, which is useless, and three of us have copied it out by hand anyway."

Part 5. The last line (15 to 40 words)

Write this one before you write the middle, because it is the line you have to get through when your voice goes, and it helps to know it is waiting. Keep it short, say it slowly, and let it be a goodbye rather than a summary. A longer set of options sits in how to end a eulogy.

"Thank you for the forty-one years, Mum. I'll read the ends first. I promise."

"Goodbye, Raj. Friday will not be the same, and we will be bringing the sweets ourselves from now on."

"He would have hated this much attention. Thank you for coming anyway. Goodnight, Dad."

"That is all I have, and it is not enough, and she would tell me to sit down. So I will."

A complete eulogy built on the five parts

Here is the structure carrying a whole speech. It runs about four minutes read aloud at a funeral pace, which is slower than you think. The five parts arrive in order and there are no headings in it, because the structure is meant to be invisible to the room and useful only to you.

"My name is Jenny and Ken was my father. There were three of us, and I am the eldest, which my brothers tell me is the only reason I am standing here. Dad asked for no fuss. He is getting some anyway.

He was a joiner for forty-six years, most of it in the same workshop on Dale Street, and he smelled of sawdust in a way that I did not notice until I was about thirty and it was gone. He got up at five. He could not be in a room with an untuned radio. He called every dog he met by the wrong name on purpose, which he found funnier each year. He was married to our mother for fifty-one years and he still went quiet when she walked into a room, right up to the end.

In 1994 our car died on the A1 outside Grantham, in February, with three children in the back. Dad had no breakdown cover, because breakdown cover was for people who did not know how an engine worked. He got out, lifted the bonnet, looked at it for a long time, then walked two miles to a phone box and called a man named Gordon he had met once at a wedding. Gordon came. Gordon towed us home. We had dinner with Gordon and his wife every Christmas for the next eleven years. That is the whole of my father in one evening: he would not pay for a thing he could do himself, he could not actually do it, and a stranger ended up family by closing time.

The other thing I want to say is smaller. Every Sunday for the last six years of her life, Dad drove to his mother's house and cut her toenails, because she could not reach and would not have a nurse near her. He never mentioned it once. I found out from a neighbour after she died. He was not a man who talked about being good. He just turned up on Sundays.

He trained about a hundred and ten apprentices. Six of them are in this room. Two run their own firms now, and both still talk about the right way and the Ken way as though those are two different things. His grandchildren have his hands and one of them has his laugh, which is unfair on her.

He would have hated this much attention. Thank you for coming anyway. Goodnight, Dad."

Read it again and you can see the joins. Part one is the first short paragraph. Part two is the paragraph of specifics, no adjectives in it. Part three is the two stories, and together they are the longest stretch of the speech. Part four is the apprentices and the grandchildren. Part five is nineteen words.

The same structure in a two minute eulogy

The five parts compress. If you have been given two minutes, or you do not trust your voice to last longer, keep all five and cut each one to its smallest honest size. One story instead of two is the main saving. This version runs about 240 words. There are more at that length in short eulogy examples.

"I'm Alice. Peter was my brother, the eldest of four, and I spent most of the 1970s following him around the back field.

He was a postman in this village for thirty-one years, so a fair few of you knew him before I did. He whistled badly and constantly. He fed other people's cats. He had an opinion about the correct way to put up a fence and he would share it with you whether or not you had a fence.

When our mother went into hospital in 2009, Peter drove the forty minutes there and the forty minutes back every single day for nine weeks. He took her the local paper, which she did not read, and he read it to her instead, including the classified ads, because it made her laugh. The nurses started saving him a chair.

He left four of us who all still call that field the back field, and a village where the cats are suspiciously well fed.

Goodbye, Pete. Save me a chair."

Three other eulogy structures, and when to use one instead

Use a different structure when the five part shape fights the person. There are three that come up often, and each one suits a particular kind of life.

The chronological structure, for a long life

Walk through the decades: where they started, the middle, the last years. This works when the facts of the life are the story, and it works badly when the life was short or the last years were hard, because the speech then ends at the worst point. Four or five stops is the limit. More than that and it turns into a reading of a form.

Filled in, the stops look like this: "She was born in Ipoh in 1938, the fourth of seven." Then: "She came here in 1961 with one suitcase and a job offer that turned out not to exist." Then: "The forty years of the shop." Then: "And then the grandchildren, who she liked considerably more than she had liked her own children, as she told them often."

The three traits structure, for someone everyone knew differently

Name three qualities and give each one a story. This is the easiest structure to write under pressure, because you can draft the three in any order and three shortish stories are less daunting than one long one. It suits a person whose friends, family and colleagues are all in the room and all knew a different version of them.

Filled in: "Three things about Raj. He was patient, he was stubborn, and he was the single nosiest man I have ever met." Then one story per word, 150 words each, and a last line.

The one story structure, for a short eulogy or a tight throat

Tell a single story from start to finish and let it carry everything. Open with your name, tell the story, then say in two sentences what the story shows and say goodbye. It is the best structure for a person who is not sure they can speak for long, because once the story starts it pulls you through, and a story is easier to say out loud than a list of qualities is.

How to fill the structure in when you have almost no time

Work in this order, and give yourself fifty minutes: five on the last line, ten on the stories, ten on the portrait, five on the opening, ten on what they left behind, ten reading it out loud on your feet. The order matters more than the clock. Writing the last line first means the end of the speech exists before you are tired, and reading it aloud catches the sentences you cannot physically say.

Write the stories as you would tell them to a friend in a kitchen. Do not reach for funeral language. If a sentence has the word "beloved" in it and you have never said that word out loud, cut it.

If the outline is clear and the sentences still will not come, the Manjasheets eulogy writer asks you a few quiet questions about them and puts a first draft into these five parts, so you have something to cut and argue with instead of a blank screen. You can read the preview before you decide anything.

What to do when one of the five parts is empty

Cut it and redistribute the words. An empty part is information, not a failure. If you have no stories, you probably did not know them well, and the honest move is to borrow: ring two people who did, ask them for one specific memory each, and say in the speech that you are passing on what their sister told you. If what they left behind is genuinely hard to name, say less and make the portrait longer.

The one part you cannot cut is the last line. A eulogy that stops rather than ends leaves the room holding its breath, and you are the one who has to walk back to your seat through that.

What are the three main parts of a eulogy?

The three main parts are the opening, the body and the close: who you are and who they were, the stories that show it, and a goodbye. The five part structure above is the same three parts with the body split into the portrait and the stories, and the close split into what they left behind and the last line.

What are the 7 steps to writing a eulogy?

The seven steps usually given are: gather memories, pick a structure, write the opening, write one or two stories, write what they left behind, write the last line, then read it out loud on your feet and cut. The order is the useful part. Collecting memories before choosing a structure stops you writing the speech twice.

What is the best last line of a eulogy?

The best last line is a direct goodbye in your own words, 15 to 40 words long, said slowly. "Goodnight, Dad" lands harder than any quotation. Use their name if you can manage it, keep it short enough to get through if your voice goes, and avoid ending on a summary of the speech you just gave.

What should you avoid saying in a eulogy?

Avoid family conflict, money, medical detail from the final weeks, anything the person kept private, and jokes that need a backstory to work. Also avoid the phrases that say nothing: she will live on in our hearts, words cannot express, she was one of a kind. Specific beats grand every time.

How long should a eulogy be?

Three to five minutes, which is 500 to 750 words read aloud at a funeral pace. Ten minutes is long even for a much loved person, and two minutes is completely acceptable if that is what you can manage. Funeral directors usually plan around four minutes a speaker, so ask yours if there are several of you.

Pick the structure, give the stories the most room, write the last line early. That is the whole of it, and it is enough to get a page written tonight.

Nobody in that room is assessing your speech. They are there for the same person you are, and they will be grateful that someone stood up. If you want a draft to start from rather than a blank page, the free preview is here.