How to Write a Eulogy in One Hour, Minute by Minute

You can write a usable eulogy in one hour: 10 minutes of notes, 10 choosing, 25 writing, 15 reading it aloud. Aim for 500 to 700 words, which runs three to five minutes out loud. Do not plan a second draft. The one you write in this hour is the one you read.

It is late. The funeral is tomorrow, or the day after, and someone needs the words by morning. You have been to the funeral home, you have answered forty messages, and this is the hour you have left before you have to sleep.

An hour is enough. It is not enough to write something polished, and nobody in that room is expecting polished. It is enough to write something true, in order, that you can read out loud without losing your place.

Below is the hour, split into five blocks, with the words filled in at each step. After it are three complete eulogies written in exactly this hour, so you can see what comes out the other end. Set a timer on your phone. Start.

What the hour actually looks like

The hour splits five ways: 10 minutes of raw notes, 10 minutes choosing, 25 minutes writing without stopping, 10 minutes reading it aloud, 5 minutes marking up the page. The writing block is deliberately short. Most people who run out of time did not run out of writing time. They ran out of deciding time.

Minutes 0 to 10: write everything down, badly

Set a timer for 10 minutes and answer five prompts in note form. No sentences, no order, no judgment about what is worth saying. You are filling a page so that the next block has something to choose from.

• Five things they said often.
• Three things they owned, wore, drove or carried around.
• Two arguments and two kindnesses.
• Who they were before you knew them.
• The last completely ordinary day you had with them.

A real ten minutes looks like this. These are the actual notes behind the first example further down the page:

• "Have you eaten?" Always first, before hello.
• Said "we'll see" when she meant no.
• The red tin on top of the fridge. Buttons, not biscuits.
• Reading glasses on a chain. Three pairs, all lost.
• Row about me dropping out of the nursing course, 1997. She was right.
• Drove four hours to sit with me after the baby. Did not say anything, just cooked.
• Worked at the surgery on Grange Road, 26 years.
• Was a typist in Leeds before that. Won a competition for speed, apparently.
• Tea at four o'clock exactly. Wimbledon fortnight. A bargain she could quote the original price of.
• Last normal Thursday: she made me look at a leaflet about a cruise she had no intention of booking.

That is the whole job of the first ten minutes. It is messy and it is specific, and specific is the only thing that matters in a eulogy. "She was kind" is forgettable. A red tin of buttons on top of the fridge is not.

Minutes 10 to 20: pick three things and one story

Choose exactly three things about them and exactly one story, then cross out everything else. The crossing out is the work. A eulogy that tries to cover a whole life says nothing about any part of it.

Use this filter on your notes:

1. Three traits that anyone in the room would nod at.
2. One story that proves one of those traits. Not the most dramatic story. The one where they behaved most like themselves.
3. One sentence they always said, in their words, not cleaned up.

From the notes above, the selection took about four minutes: organised, nosy, would do the whole thing for you and then let you have it. The story is the cardboard Roman villa, because it shows all three at once. The sentence is "we'll see."

If two stories are fighting, pick the one you can tell without checking a fact. You do not have time to ring your aunt.

Minutes 20 to 45: write it in six slots

Write six short blocks in order, with a word count on each, and do not stop to improve a sentence. This is the shape that most eulogies land on anyway, and having it in front of you removes the hardest decision, which is what comes next. If you want the longer version of this shape, we have broken it down in the five parts of a eulogy and what goes in each, but you do not need it tonight. Six slots is enough.

1. Who you are, and who they were to you. About 40 words. "My name is Claire. Ruth was my mother." Then one sentence more, and move on. Half the room does not know you.
2. One sentence that says what they were like. About 30 words. Put the two things about them that sit oddly together: "She was the most organised person I have ever met and she could not keep a secret for ten minutes."
3. The story. About 200 words, and this is the one you spend your time on. Start in the middle of it. Name the day, the room, the object. End by saying what it showed, in one short line.
4. The two or three things everybody knew about them. About 120 words. A loved and did not love list works and takes two minutes to write: "She loved a plan, a cup of tea at exactly four o'clock, Wimbledon fortnight."
5. What they left in the people in this room. About 80 words. Keep it physical and small. Not a legacy. The way your brother writes everything down.
6. The last line. About 25 words. Speak to them, not about them. "Mum, we got here on time. You would have checked."

Six slots at those counts comes to roughly 500 words, which is three and a half minutes out loud. Write past the counts if the words are coming. You will cut in the next block anyway.

If you freeze on slot 1 and lose five minutes to it, write slot 3 first and come back. The opening is the hardest sentence in the speech and it does not have to be written first. There are more ways in than you would think in how to start a eulogy without freezing at the first line.

Minutes 45 to 55: read it out loud once and cut

Stand up, read the whole thing out loud at the speed you would actually speak, and time it. Reading in your head tells you nothing. Out loud you will find the sentence you cannot get through, the clause that ties your tongue, and the paragraph that is twice as long as it felt.

Most people read a eulogy at about 140 words a minute, slower than normal speech. So 500 words is roughly three and a half minutes and 700 words is about five. If you are over, cut in this order: the second story, then adjectives, then dates and biography, then any sentence that starts "she was always."

Mark the one line you could not say without your voice going. Do not delete it. You will want it there. Just know where it is.

Minutes 55 to 60: mark up the page so you can read it

Print it at 14 point or larger, double spaced, on one side of the paper only, and number the pages. Turning a page over at a lectern while crying is a problem you can solve now for free.

Then spend four minutes on this:

• Put a slash where you want to breathe. One at the end of every sentence, two before the last line.
• Circle the first three words of each paragraph so your eye can find its place after you look up.
• Write SLOW in the margin above the last line.
• Print two copies. Give one to the person sitting next to you, and tell them that if you stop and do not start again, they should come up and finish it.

That last step is the one people skip and the one that matters. Knowing someone else can finish the page is what lets most speakers get through it themselves.

Three eulogies written in an hour

Each of the three below came out of the hour above. None of them is polished, and you can see the joins. All three were read at a funeral by someone who had never written one before. Read whichever is closest to your situation, then write yours in the same shape with your own details in the slots.

1. For a mother, written by her daughter at midnight

My name is Claire. Ruth was my mother. There are people here who knew her far longer than I did, and I can see three of them in the second row, so I am going to tell you one small thing rather than all of it.

She was the most organised person I have ever met and she could not keep a secret for ten minutes. Those two facts cover most of her.

When I was nine I had to build a Roman villa out of cardboard for school. I left it until the Sunday night, which was the kind of thing I did and the kind of thing she never did. She did not tell me off. She went out to the garage, came back with a bread knife and a roll of masking tape, and sat on the kitchen floor with me until half past eleven. At some point she stopped helping and started designing. By the end there was underfloor heating made out of drinking straws. I got a merit for it. She told everybody at church about the merit as though she had been nowhere near that kitchen.

That was her. She would do the whole thing for you and then let you have it.

She worked at the surgery on Grange Road for twenty-six years. If you live in this town and you were ever frightened of a needle, she is the one who talked you through it. A man at the undertaker's on Tuesday told me she held his hand through a blood test in 1998 and he still knew her name. I would like that on the record.

She loved a plan, a cup of tea at exactly four o'clock, Wimbledon fortnight, and a bargain she could tell you the original price of. She did not love being late, being fussed over, or the words "I'm fine." When she meant no she said "we'll see," and every one of us knew it meant no.

The last two years were harder than she would want said out loud, so I will say only this: she was still herself on the Thursday, and she was still telling me what to do.

What she left is not in a box anywhere. It is the way my brother writes everything down. It is the fact that I cannot leave a room without checking the plugs. It is four grandchildren who each believe they were her favourite, and she managed that on purpose.

Mum, we got here on time. You would have checked.

Thank you all for coming.

2. For a friend, written the night before

I am Dev. Marcus and I met in 2009, in a queue for a kebab van outside the Students' Union, and he talked to me for forty minutes about a bus route. I want to start there, because that is the whole man. He would talk to anybody, about anything, for far too long, and you came away feeling like you had been picked out.

I wrote this last night, which he would find very funny, because Marcus was late for everything. He was late to his own thirtieth. He walked into a wedding during the speeches. He once arrived at a funeral as the cars were pulling away, stood at the gate in a suit, said "right, well," and took the widow for a pint. She still brings it up.

Here is the story I want to tell. Three years ago I lost my job on a Tuesday afternoon and I had not told anyone. At about nine that night the doorbell went and it was Marcus, holding a carrier bag with four cans, a packet of Hula Hoops and a printed-out spreadsheet in it. He had made me a spreadsheet. Column A was companies. Column B was people he knew at those companies. Column C, and I am quoting, was "how much they owe me."

We never used the spreadsheet. We ate the Hula Hoops and watched the snooker, and he did not ask me a single question about the job until I started talking on my own, about an hour in. Then he listened for two hours and said almost nothing.

That was his actual skill. Not the spreadsheet. The sitting there.

He was a terrible driver. He was a worse cook. He had strong opinions about bins. He kept a bag of other people's phone chargers in the back of his car, because he knew somebody would need one, and somebody always did.

Marcus knew everyone, and he made each of us feel like the only one. Looking round this room I can see that was a trick. I do not mind. It was a good trick, and he worked at it.

Mate, I am still angry about this and I expect I will be for a while. But I am glad it was you in that queue.

Thanks, everyone.

3. For a husband, kept deliberately short

Sixty-one years. I am not going to try to cover them in five minutes, so I am not going to try.

Jim was a joiner. He made the cot our son slept in, the table we ate every meal at, and the bench outside the back door where he had his tea every morning at ten past seven, in all weathers, including the bad ones. The bench is still there. The tea is the part I will miss.

He was not a talker. In sixty-one years I do not think he said the words out loud once. What he did instead was fix things. If I mentioned on a Monday that a drawer was sticking, the drawer was fine by Tuesday and he never mentioned that either. That was the whole conversation, and we both understood it.

He was stubborn. He was funny when he could not help it. He thought all doctors were guessing. He was wrong about that, and I told him so, and in the end he went anyway, for me.

To the grandchildren: he was proud of you in a way he could not say. You should know that he kept every card.

Jim, I will have my tea on the bench.

Thank you all for being here.

Notice what none of the three do. None of them opens with a definition of grief. None of them lists dates. None of them tries to be the final word on the person. Each one picks a handful of true, small things and stops.

What if you only have twenty minutes?

Cut the hour down to 5 minutes of notes, 10 minutes writing three paragraphs, and 5 minutes reading it aloud. Target 250 to 300 words, which is about two minutes at the lectern, and nobody will think it was too short.

The three paragraphs are: who they were to you and one sentence on what they were like; one story; one line spoken to them. That is it. The husband example above is close to this length and it holds up on its own.

Two minutes of specifics beats five minutes of filler in front of a room that is already tired. If you want to see what that length sounds like written out, there are several in short eulogy examples you can read in under three minutes. If even twenty minutes is more than you have, the eulogy writer will ask you a few questions about them and put a draft on the page for you to cut and rewrite, and the preview is free to read.

What to cut first when the hour runs out

Cut in this order, and stop as soon as you are under time: the second story, adjectives, dates and biography, anything about the illness beyond one sentence, and the thank-yous in the middle. Keep the one story, the sentence they always said, and the last line. Those three carry the speech.

Specific things worth losing without regret:

• The second story. Two stories at half length are weaker than one told properly.
• Adjectives. "A kind, generous, warm-hearted woman" says less than the red tin of buttons.
• The biography. Where they were born, where they worked, what year they married. The order of service already has it.
• The apology. Do not spend thirty words saying you are not a public speaker. Everyone knows.
• Other people's messages. If four relatives sent you a line to read out, use the best one and tell the others you ran out of time.

How to read it out loud when you have not rehearsed

Read it once standing up before you go to bed and once in the car before you go in, and that is enough rehearsal to get through it. Two reads is the difference between finding the hard line in front of people and finding it in private.

At the lectern, put both feet flat, put the paper down rather than holding it, and say the first sentence slower than feels natural. If your voice goes, stop and look at the page for three seconds. The room will wait, and a pause reads as weight rather than failure. There is more on getting through the hard line in how to deliver a eulogy without crying.

Questions people ask when the funeral is tomorrow

How to write a quick eulogy?

Pick three things about the person and one story that proves one of them, then write six short blocks: who you are, what they were like in one sentence, the story, what everybody knew about them, what they left in the room, and a last line spoken to them. Aim for 500 words. Read it aloud once and cut.

How long should a eulogy be in minutes?

Three to five minutes, which is about 500 to 700 words at a normal reading pace of 140 words a minute. Two minutes is fine if the words are specific. Over eight minutes is long for one speaker, and most funeral directors will quietly tell you the same.

What are two important things to include in a eulogy?

One specific story that shows what the person was actually like, and one sentence they said often, in their own words. Those two do more than anything else in the speech. The story gives the room the person back for ninety seconds, and the sentence makes everyone hear their voice.

What should you not put in a eulogy?

Leave out medical detail, family disputes, money and the will, inside jokes that only three people get, and anything you are not certain is true. Also leave out a long apology for your own speaking. If a line is there to settle something rather than to say something, cut it.

Can you write a eulogy in one hour for a mother or a father?

Yes, and the hour works the same way for a parent, with one change: expect the choosing block to take longer, because there is more to choose from. Pick the three traits from one decade of their life rather than all of it. A eulogy for a parent that covers one chapter properly lands better than one that covers sixty years at a sprint.

Before you start the timer

You do not need to write something that sums them up. Nobody has ever done that in five minutes, and the room is not waiting for it. You need one true story, told plainly, and a last line you can get to the end of.

Set the timer for ten minutes and write down the five things they used to say. That is the whole of the first block, and once it is on the page the rest of the hour is just arranging. If you would rather not start from an empty page at all, you can read a free preview of a draft first and edit from there.