Eulogy Writing Tips That Work When the Draft Feels Flat

The best eulogy writing tips are the specific ones: name one real detail early, tell one whole story instead of five summaries, and read it out loud. Most advice stops at "speak from the heart," which is true and useless at 11pm. Below are twelve tips with the actual lines attached.

You probably have something already. A page of notes, a list of dates, three paragraphs that read like a resume. Or you have the funeral on Saturday and nothing at all.

Either way, the problem is rarely that you do not know what you want to say. It is that the words come out general. Kind, careful, and about no one in particular. Every tip below is aimed at that one problem, and each comes with a before and after so you can see what actually changes.

Nothing here will make this week easier. It will make the writing part faster, and it will stop you standing up with a speech that sounds like it was written about a stranger.

Six eulogy writing tips for the words themselves

1. Name one specific thing in the first twenty seconds

Open with a detail only you would know, not with your relationship to the person. The room already knows you are the daughter. What it does not know is the thing that will make them see her.

Flat:

My mother was a kind and generous woman who touched the lives of everyone she met.

Specific:

My mother kept a biscuit tin of other people's spare keys. Eleven sets, labelled in pencil. If you locked yourself out anywhere on that street between 1982 and last March, you came to our back door.

The second one is not better writing. It is the same affection with a fact in it. Go through your notes, find the oddest true detail you have, and move it to the front. If the first line is the part you are stuck on, there are more openings written out in full here.

2. Tell one whole story, not five summaries

Pick one story and tell it all the way through, with the time of day and what was said. Five compressed anecdotes land as a list. One finished story makes people see him.

Five summaries sound like this:

He loved fishing, he loved his garden, he never missed a match, he always had time for the neighbours, and he made the best Sunday roast in the county.

One story sounds like this:

The first time he took me fishing I was six and I cried because the worm moved. He did not laugh at me. He baited the hook himself, handed me the rod, and said we would tell my mother I had done it. We caught nothing for four hours. He bought chips on the way home so we had something to show.

Keep the other four as one sentence each, later. The finished story is the part people repeat to each other in the car park afterwards.

3. Cut the biography

Dates, schools and job titles belong in the order of service, not in the speech. A eulogy that opens in 1948 and works forward has lost the room by 1971.

Replace the whole chronology with one line:

He was born in Dundee, worked forty-one years for the same firm, and never once moved house. That is the short version. Here is the one that matters.

Then go straight into the story. If the family wants the full timeline read out, offer to put it in the printed programme instead. Nobody has ever come out of a funeral wishing the eulogy had more dates in it.

4. Use the words they actually used

Put one of their own phrases in the speech, quoted, exactly as they said it. One real phrase does more work than any adjective you could choose.

She had the same review for everything, a wedding, a hip replacement, a Tuesday: "Well, that was lovely, wasn't it." Said with her coat already on.

Ask two relatives what the person always said. You will have a list of sayings in ten minutes, and the oddest one on it is usually the right one. Swearing is allowed if the family would laugh. You know your family.

5. Describe hands, not virtues

Say what the person did with their body and their time, and let the listener supply the virtue. Virtues named outright go in one ear and out the other.

Named:

Dad was incredibly hard working and selfless.

Shown:

Dad's hands were split across the knuckles from November to March every year. He would not wear gloves to work because he could not feel the wiring through them. He came in, ran them under the hot tap, swore quietly, and asked what was for tea.

Go through your draft and underline every word like kind, generous, selfless, strong. For each one, write down the thing you were picturing when you typed it. Keep the thing and delete the word.

6. Say the hard thing once, plainly

If there is something everyone in the room already knows, name it in one sentence and move on. Pretending it away makes the whole speech sound false. Dwelling on it makes people brace.

The last two years were hard, and some of you saw more of that than I did. I am not going to spend his funeral on them. I want to talk about the twenty years before, when he was the loudest man in any room he walked into.

One sentence of acknowledgement buys you the rest of the speech. It also stops the thing sitting in the room unsaid while you talk around it.

Six more for the parts people get wrong

7. Write the last line first

Decide how the speech ends before you write the middle. The ending is the part you will be closest to tears for, and it is far easier to choose it calmly on a Wednesday than to find it standing at the lectern.

Pick something small and concrete, then stop:

There is a spare key to our house on a hook in her kitchen. I am going to leave it there.

Then write towards it. Everything in the middle gets easier once you know where it is going. Twelve more endings, with the paragraphs that lead into them, are written out here.

8. Keep it to 3 to 5 minutes, about 500 to 750 words

Three to five minutes is right for almost every funeral, and that is 500 to 750 words on the page. Time it out loud with a phone timer rather than counting words, because you will read more slowly on the day than you do now.

If you are over, cut whole paragraphs rather than shaving words off each one. Start with anything that is a list. A eulogy that runs eleven minutes is not more loving than one that runs four. It is just longer, and there are people in the back row standing up.

If three of you are speaking, agree a cap between yourselves beforehand. Two minutes each, well chosen, beats twenty minutes of the same three stories told three times.

9. Read it out loud, standing up

Read the whole thing aloud at least three times before the day, standing, at full volume. Reading it silently on a screen hides every sentence you cannot actually say.

You will find the long sentence you run out of breath in, the name you stumble on, and the one line that stops you. Mark that line in the margin. Then either cut it or decide now to pause there, drink some water, and carry on. A planned pause does not look like falling apart. It looks like someone taking their time.

10. Put the funny part early, not at the end

If the speech has a laugh in it, put it in the first third. Laughter early gives the room permission and steadies your own hands. Saved for the end, it fights with the close and usually loses.

He was banned from the bowls club twice. Not once. Twice. The second time there was a letter.

Three short sentences and the room breathes out. You do not need more than that, and you must not explain the joke afterwards.

11. Thank people by name, but only three

Name at most three people, and be exact about what they did. A long list of thanks turns a eulogy into committee minutes, and the people left off a long list notice far more than the people on it.

Marie sat with him every Tuesday for two years. I want to say that out loud while everybody is here.

Everyone else gets thanked properly at the wake, by you, one at a time, which is where that belongs anyway.

12. Print it in 16 point, double spaced, and number the pages

Print it large, on one side of the paper only, and number every page. Do not read from a phone, which dims and locks. Do not use one folded sheet, which you will have to open at the lectern with hands that are shaking.

Put it in a plain envelope in an inside pocket. Give a second copy to someone sitting in the front row. If you cannot finish, they can stand up and read the rest, and knowing that is often the thing that lets you finish.

What is the best opening line for a eulogy?

The best opening line for a eulogy names one specific, true thing about the person in under fifteen words. It does not introduce you, thank the room, or announce that words cannot describe them. Start on the detail. The context can wait two sentences.

These all work, and in each case this is the first thing out of your mouth:

My father owned four identical blue jumpers and believed this was a system.

Nan answered the phone like she had been sitting beside it all day. She usually had.

There were eleven sets of other people's keys in my mother's kitchen.

He kept every receipt. Every single one. I have found a shoebox from 1994.

Thirty-one years I knew him, and I never once saw that man hurry.

My sister was the only person I have ever met who read the manual first.

He rang me every Sunday at four. Last Sunday was quiet.

Grandad's shed had a sign on it that said "Out". He was always in it.

She taught four hundred children to swim and could not swim a stroke herself.

My brother's last message to me was a photograph of a sandwich.

Notice what none of them do. They do not say "we are gathered here today", they do not apologise for the speaker, and they do not borrow a line from a poet who never met the person. Your version of one of these is sitting in your notes already.

What is the best last line of a eulogy?

The best last line of a eulogy is short, concrete, and spoken to the person or to the room rather than about them. Say one small thing and stop. Do not recap the speech, do not thank everyone a second time, and do not reach for something that sounds like an inscription.

Ten closings, each one the actual final sentence of the speech:

Thank you for the jumpers, Dad. I am keeping all four.

I will answer on the first ring from now on.

There is a spare key on a hook in her kitchen. I am going to leave it there.

Goodnight, Grandad. Out, and always in.

She would have hated this much fuss, so I am going to stop.

Sunday at four. I will think of you then.

We will be all right, Mum. You did that part already.

I loved him. That is the whole speech, really.

Go well, old man.

Thank you all for coming. He would have counted you.

Choose one now, write it at the top of your notes, and build backwards from it.

A short eulogy with all twelve tips in it

This is what the tips look like applied. A complete eulogy for a grandfather, 270 words, roughly three minutes read at funeral speed. It opens on a detail, tells one story the whole way through, names the hard thing once, thanks one person, and stops on something small.

Grandad's shed had a sign on it that said "Out". He was always in it.

The shed was six feet by eight. It had a kettle, a radio tuned to the cricket, and one chair. Not two. If you wanted to sit down out there you brought a crate.

I spent most of one summer in that shed. I was fourteen and had been suspended from school for a week, and nobody in the house would talk to me about it. Grandad did not talk to me about it either. He handed me a chisel and a piece of oak and said we were making a box. So we made a box. It took six days. It is not a good box. The lid sticks. It has been on my desk for twenty-two years and every important thing I own has been inside it at some point.

He never asked what had happened at school. On the Friday he said, "Right. You know how to make a box now. Go back on Monday." And I went back on Monday.

The last eighteen months were not good, and most of you here know that better than I do. I am not going to spend his funeral on them.

Marie came every Tuesday for two years, and she carried the radio in from the shed and put it by his bed. I want to say that out loud while everybody is here.

He taught me that you do not have to talk about a thing to mend it. You just have to hand somebody a chisel.

Goodnight, Grandad. Out, and always in.

Notice what is not in it. No dates, no job title, no list of hobbies, no quotation. Nothing in that speech would work for anybody else's grandfather, which is the entire point of it.

How to run these tips over a draft you already have

Do it in four passes, in this order, and do not try to fix everything at once. Twenty minutes is enough for all four.

Pass one, the underline pass. Underline every abstract word: kind, generous, strong, selfless, funny, loved by all. Beside each one write the thing you were picturing when you typed it. Keep what you wrote in the margin and delete the word.

Pass two, the front pass. Find the most specific true sentence anywhere in the draft and move it to the very top. Delete whatever was there before it, which is almost certainly throat-clearing.

Pass three, the timer pass. Read it aloud, standing, with a timer running. Over five minutes, cut whole paragraphs, starting with any paragraph that is really a list.

Pass four, the last line. Choose the closing sentence on purpose, and check that the paragraph before it does not already end the speech. Two endings in a row is the most common fault in a finished draft.

If what you have is thinner than a draft, the shape is the thing to fix first, and the five parts of a eulogy and what goes in each will give you somewhere to put what you have got. If you have the memories but cannot get them into sentences at all, the eulogy writer takes a few answers about the person and puts a full draft on the page for you to cut up. There is a preview you can read before you decide anything.

Eulogy writing questions people ask most

What are the 7 steps to writing an eulogy?

Seven steps: collect memories from two or three family members, choose the one story you will tell in full, write a single line that covers the biography, write the closing sentence, draft the middle towards that closing sentence, cut to 500 to 750 words, then read it aloud standing up. Most people do step one and step six and skip the five in between, which is why drafts stall.

What are the three main points of a eulogy?

Who the person was to you, one story that proves it, and what you are taking with you. That is the whole architecture. The dates, the job and the hobbies are optional detail and can go in the printed order of service instead of the speech.

How long should a eulogy be?

Three to five minutes, which is 500 to 750 written words. Under two minutes can feel abrupt unless several people are speaking. Over eight minutes loses the room however good the writing is. Time it out loud rather than trusting the word count, because you will read more slowly on the day.

How do you write a eulogy for a family member when you are grieving?

Split it over two sittings. In the first, get every memory down in any order, badly, in fragments, with no sentences. In the second, ideally the next morning, choose one story and build around it. Separating the remembering from the writing is what stops people sitting in front of a blank page for four days.

Should you use a eulogy template?

Use one for the shape, not for the words. A template stops you writing a chronology and shows you where the story goes. The moment it starts handing you sentences like "will be dearly missed by all who knew him", delete them. The frame can be borrowed. Every sentence inside it should be one only you could have written.

You do not have to write something worthy of them. You need four hundred true words, read slowly, off paper, from your inside pocket. Pick the oddest detail you remember about them and start there. If the first sentence still will not come, you can read a free preview of a draft and spend tonight editing instead of staring.