A few years back, a friend came to me, highly agitated. His father had died recently and he had been asked by his mother to give a eulogy at the funeral the next day. But he didn’t know what to say or how to write a eulogy.

Of course, he knew his father very well but when it came to putting it into words, he was totally lost. With the funeral 24 hours away, he was starting to panic at the thought of making a fool out of himself and upsetting his mother more than she already was. In short, he needed my help.

The next 24 hours was a blur of story telling, rapid note taking and even faster typing. By the end, we had a eulogy which he could use the next day and in the end, everything worked out OK. Here’s how we did it.

Outline the Person’s Life

We started out by writing down his father’s life, from the moment he was born to the moment he died. Obviously not everything, but more the highlights.

A eulogy shouldn’t really be any more than 5 minutes, 10 at the most. Make it any more and people start fidgeting on the uncomfortable church pews and start to get bored. Plus, the person delivering the eulogy is probably going to be very emotional, so delivering such a long speech is probably going to be impossible for them. Keep it short and snappy.

By noting down the highlights of his life – his childhood, his wartime service in the German Air Force, his subsequent career as a postman, his being a father and grandfather and finally his death, we more or less established a framework for the eulogy with all the different areas we needed to cover.

Toss in Anecdotal Stories

The second step was to think of some suitable stories to throw in. You have to be careful here because your idea of humour and / or good taste may be totally different to other peoples’, and a funeral is the last place where you want an uncomfortable silence because you told them how he once seduced the housekeeper in the broom cupboard.

Think of some funeral-friendly interesting stories about the person’s life that illustrates a positive aspect of their character, a fond memory that everyone can latch onto and smile about. Humour and jokes are fine but as I said, nothing inappropriate or bawdy. Keep it clean.

Write in a Conversational Tone

Then simply start writing it. You should always write it in a chatty conversational tone, so it helped me to first “write” it in my head and imagine it as if I was talking to someone. It’s difficult to really explain this but visualize yourself in the church reading out the eulogy. Then start transferring it to paper. I know, you’re probably confused but there isn’t a better way to describe it.

The bottom line is keep it short, keep it clean and emphasize the positive aspects of his or her character. That’s assuming of course that the person had positive aspects to their character. If not, then it may be diplomatically advisable to massage the truth a bit (which I suppose is a polite way of saying to lie through your teeth).

Good luck.

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Mark O’Neill is a freelance writer of 20 years experience, and also the managing editor of MakeUseOf.com, since August 2007. You can see his personal website at markoneill.org Mark has 21 post(s) at Free Writing Center