From Survivor to Stevie Wonder: this speechwriter's lesson on moving people

Stevie Wonder's speechwriter, a reality star, an MTV vice-president and a Yale-educated best-selling author walk into a Canberra bar, in the form of just one person, Stephen Fishbach.

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Who do you talk to first?

Stephen Fishbach in Canberra for the 2026 Canberra Writers Festival. Picture by Karleen Minney

Most would choose the Survivor returnee contestant, but in a city where most of our jobs involve listening to a speech, writing a speech, delivering a speech, analysing a speech, or living with the fallout of some speech, it's the speechwriter that gets the hottest grilling.

Fishbach is in town for the Canberra Writers Festival, shilling his bestselling new book Escape!, a work that will be enjoyed by many for years to come.

But a speech is ethereal and fleeting. So, how do you write a speech that will actually stay with your audience?

Here are eight tips from one of the greats.

Author Stephen Fishbach, with his best-seller Escape! Picture by Karleen Minney

1- Be truthful

"People have such sensitive barometers of BS - you know that they can tell when someone is lying or skirting the truth," he says.

"You just can't paper over it. You can't hope to put forth a talking point and think that nobody will see through."

2- Know your speaker - spend time, communicate and learn their quirks

"Learn their idioms, learn about their past. The more intimately I know someone, the more authentic and powerful the speech can be," he says.

"I like to know someone's childhood and their struggles, then I can sort of channel some of that into a speech I'm writing and it will feel more true because it's based on their real human experience."

3- Humour is welcome

After some years at MTV as vice-president, Fishbach seamlessly took on writing corporate speeches, which evolved into speeches about world peace for Stevie Wonder to deliver at the United Nations.

"One of my remits was Stevie loves to joke about his disability, and I'm like, how?" he says.

"How can I, who does not have this disability, do this? It felt so inappropriate for me to be scripting a joke for one of the great artists in history about his disability. I felt so uncomfortable, but you know, that was what the job description was.

"So I kind of soft-balled it: 'You may not know this about me. I'm going to reveal something that you've never heard before. This is going to blow all your minds, but, I'm blind'. And there was a big laugh, but that moment enabled me to get deeper into people's hearts."

4- So is emotion - and that's where Survivor comes in handy

Superfans will know from the first season the notorious "Sue Hawk speech", delivered by a juror, which would go on to inform the finales of the next 50 seasons to follow.

"She was so passionate. She felt these things so strongly, and that really is the heart of a great speech, someone speaking passionately about something important," Fishbach says.

Work in some strong metaphors - Sue Hawk, for example, used snakes and rats.

"Keep your figurative language really relevant to the context that you're in," he says.

"When [Ronald] Reagan gave his 'tear down this wall' speech, the wall is obviously literally the wall, but there was again broader meaning, which spoke to broader themes."

5- It's not about you

While we may be invoking the great and the good, it's important to leave your ego at the door. Someone else will be getting the credit for your words, and that's OK.

"When the Stevie Wonder speeches were quoted and then some of the things that he had said, that I had written, were published again, honestly, I was just delighted by that," he says.

"The fact that something I had written was now part of the public record, it was somewhat thrilling."

6- Stay on theme, but don't repeat yourself

Fishbach famously wrote nine speeches for Wonder about the same thing.

"There really aren't nine things to say about world peace. There's just sort of the one, which is 'we want world peace'," he says.

"I would try to find different aspects of world peace that were relevant, and they were all cued to his songs. So referring to I just called to say I love you, I talked about the peace between individuals and the peace between our families. And then, there was another one about peace in a neighborhood, and so on. Try to find aspects of the theme that are more local and connected to people's real lives."

7- If you don't agree, don't show it

For Fishbach, the best tactic when writing for people you disagree with is to remember they're still people, "with their own passions - they are still coming to these issues with some human need at their heart".

"So try to understand what the need was that was driving them, and speak to that. Even if I disagreed strongly with the policy positions that they were using, I would try to address and understand that need.

8- Lead up to a big finale

"After you've touched them emotionally, end in a call to action - people want to know what to do at the end of a speech," he says.

"Make them feel they can take the energy your speech has tried to capture and channel it into actually doing something in real life."

Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech is arguably one of the most famous speeches in modern history. So what's Fishbach's dream?

Incredibly, it involves Canberra.

"The Canberra Writers Festival, I feel like I'm so honored to be here. I feel like that's the dream is to be at these venues that you have no business being at," he says.

"I'm really thrilled to be here."

Stephen Fishbach, sporting a Survivor Canberra buff. Picture by Karleen Minney

• Stephen Fishbach has two appearances at this year's Canberra Writers Festival.
• "How do you survive reality tv", about his best-selling book Escape!, is on Friday, October 16, 8pm at Verity Lane Market.
• "The art of good speech" is on Sunday, October 18, 1:30pm at the National Archives of Australia.

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