The Art of Story

A eulogy

Saying goodbye at a funeral or memorial

A eulogy asks you to speak honestly about someone while everyone in the room is grieving. The pull is to list their virtues, or to leave out anything hard. The eulogies people remember sound like the person, with the struggle and the strength side by side.

The shape

The hard part and what they gave, side by side

  1. A story that sounds like them. A moment where you can almost hear their voice. Their own phrases help.
  2. Name what was hard, gently. If life was hard on them, or they were hard on others, one honest sentence is enough. It makes the rest believable.
  3. What they gave. What they did with it, or for other people. This is the strength that sits beside the struggle.
  4. What stays. Something they left in the people in the room: a habit, a saying, a recipe.
  5. Keep it short. Three to five minutes is usually right, and less if others are speaking too.

How it can sound

Dad was not an easy man to work for. Ask anyone who stacked shelves in his shop on a Saturday. But every one of those teenagers got a lift home, and when one of them had a sick mum, he quietly kept paying her for the shifts she couldn't do. He'd hate me telling you that. He was hard on people because he believed they could be more, and most of them were.

The one detail to find

Their own words. A phrase they always said, quoted exactly, brings them into the room.

Leave out

Their whole life in order, anything that would hurt the family to hear, and more than one honest sentence about the hard part.

If you are writing this in the first days after a death, a rough draft is enough, and someone else can read it on the day if you can't.

Build it

  • Oscillating Narrative Builder: Start from the hard part and let it help you find the strength beside it, without tidying the story into a happy ending.

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