How to Write a Eulogy: A Gentle Guide

Someone has asked you to speak, and you said yes — possibly before you had any real idea what that would involve. That is how most eulogies begin.

You do not need to be a writer. A eulogy is not a performance, and it is not a biography. It is a few true things about someone, said out loud, by a person who knew them. Nobody in the room is assessing it.

This guide breaks the job into small pieces you can do one at a time. If you only have an hour, step two is the one that matters most.

Step by step

1. Gather before you write

   Do not open a blank page and try to compose. Open a note and collect. Write down anything that surfaces: a phrase they always used, what their kitchen smelled like, the argument they never dropped, the way they answered the phone.

   Ask two or three other people for theirs. A text message is enough. You will get things you had forgotten or never knew, and you will notice certain stories coming back from several people — those are the ones the room already shares.

   Aim for a page of fragments. Most of it will not reach the final speech, and that is the point. Choosing from plenty is far easier than squeezing something out of nothing.

2. Decide the one thing you want people to understand

   A eulogy cannot hold a whole life. Trying turns it into a list of dates and places, and a list does not sound like anyone.

   Instead, finish this sentence: if people remember one thing about them after today, I want it to be ___. That they were generous in a way that cost them something. That they were funny at exactly the wrong moments. That they kept going when it would have been reasonable to stop.

   Everything you keep should serve that sentence. Everything that does not, however true, can go. This single decision does more work than any other step here.

3. Build it from specifics, not adjectives

   Saying someone was kind tells the room nothing, because it is said at every funeral. Describing the spare coat they kept in the boot of the car, in case they passed someone who needed one, is kindness — and it is unmistakably them.

   Go back through your fragments and look for the concrete ones: objects, habits, exact words, small scenes. Prefer them every time.

   Three good specifics will do more than twenty adjectives. If you only manage three, you have enough.

   Illustrative example — adapt it, do not copy it

   Instead of “Dad was always generous”, try: “Dad never let anyone else pay for dinner. Not once in forty years. He would excuse himself halfway through the meal, and you would only find out later that he had already settled it at the counter.”

4. Give it a simple shape

   Four parts is plenty. Who you are and how you knew them. The one thing you decided on above. Two or three specifics that show it is true. What you want to leave people with.

   You do not need a clever structure. Chronology works. So does moving through the parts of their life — home, work, the thing they loved. Pick one and stay inside it.

   If a section will not come, leave a gap and move on. Order is much easier to fix later than a blank page is to fill now.

5. Write the opening and the ending last

   Openings are where people stall for hours. Write the middle first, since you already have the specifics, and the opening usually becomes obvious once you can see what it has to introduce.

   For the ending, resist summing up a life. Something small and direct lands better: what you will miss, what you will keep doing because of them, what you would say if they were here.

   Thank you is a complete ending. So is their name.

6. Read it aloud before the day

   Writing and speaking are different. Sentences that look fine on a page can be unsayable. Read it out and cut anything that makes you stumble twice.

   Time yourself while you read. Nerves speed people up, but a piece that runs long on the couch will still run long at the lectern.

   Read it once to another person. You will find out where it is unclear, and you will find out which parts you cannot get through — which is much better to know now than to discover standing up there.

Common pitfalls

• Trying to cover everything. The instinct is to include every job, every address, every relative by name. It produces a CV rather than a portrait, and it is the most common reason a eulogy runs long and flat. Choose depth over coverage. Nobody leaves a funeral wishing the speech had listed more.
• Letting adjectives do the work. Wonderful, special, loving, one of a kind. They are true, and they are invisible, because the room has heard them at every funeral it has ever attended. Replace each one with the thing that made you reach for it in the first place.
• Sanding off anything difficult. A person made entirely of virtues is not recognisable as a person, and the room quietly knows it. You are under no obligation to air anything private, but a gentle acknowledgement that they were stubborn, or hopeless with money, or impossible before their first coffee, usually makes people smile — and it makes the praise believable.
• Writing for the wrong audience. It is easy to start writing to impress the room, or to pre-empt a relative you think might judge it. Write instead to one person who loved them and is sitting near the back. The speech gets simpler and better almost immediately.
• Waiting until you feel ready. You may not feel ready at any point before the day. Waiting for that feeling usually means writing at two in the morning the night before, which is harder in every respect. A rough draft a few days out, however bad, is a kindness to yourself.

Delivering it on the day

Print it. Do not read from a phone — screens dim, hands shake, and a lock screen at the lectern is a bad moment to have. Use a large font, double spaced, on numbered pages.

Go slower than feels natural. Nerves compress everything. A pause that feels enormous to you is barely noticeable from the seats, and it gives people time to catch up with you.

Assume you may cry, and arrange things so that it does not matter. Put a glass of water within reach. Mark one or two places where you could stop and breathe. It is a funeral; nobody is surprised by tears, and nobody thinks less of you for them.

Ask someone to be your backup and give them a copy in advance. Knowing the words will be heard either way takes a surprising amount of pressure off, and you will most likely not need them.

Hold the paper and read it. Memorising adds risk for no benefit. Nobody has ever thought worse of a eulogy for being read from the page.

Frequently asked questions

You will not write a perfect eulogy, and nobody listening is expecting one. What people want is to recognise the person they loved in what you say, and to feel that someone who knew them stood up and said so.

If you get one specific right — the detail that makes the room nod, or laugh, or look at each other — you have done the job.

Take it in small pieces, start earlier than feels necessary, and let it be plain.