How to write a eulogy: a short structure that works

A eulogy is not a biography. Nobody has ever left a service wishing the dates had been more complete. What people remember is one specific story told honestly, and one sentence that sounds like the person.

The structure

1. One image. Not a summary — a picture. "He kept a screwdriver in the door of the truck for thirty years."
2. Who they were to you, in a single line.
3. One story, told in full, with the small details left in.
4. What that story says about them, said plainly.
5. The thing they'd want said to everyone in the room.

Two minutes spoken is roughly 250 to 300 words. Write it, then cut a third. The cut version is always better.

Openings that work

• A direct quote of something they always said.
• A tiny, concrete habit only the family would know.
• The moment you understood something about them.

Openings to avoid

• A dictionary definition.
• "Words cannot express…" — they can, that's why you're up there.
• A full chronology beginning with the birth certificate.

A full example you can adapt

Here is what the structure looks like when it is finished. It runs about two minutes spoken. Change every detail and keep the shape.

My father kept a screwdriver in the door of his truck for thirty years. Not a toolbox — one screwdriver, in the door, where he could reach it without stopping. He was my dad, and he was the person everyone in this room called when something broke. The summer I turned sixteen my car died on the highway outside Mercer, and I called him at eleven at night, and he did not ask me why I was out there. He drove forty minutes, opened the hood, looked at it for about four seconds, and fixed it with that screwdriver. Then he followed me home the whole way with his brights on, and he never mentioned it again — not once, not for twenty years. That was the whole man. He did not want the story. He wanted you to get home. If he could say one thing to all of us today, I think it would be this: call somebody. He would come. He always came.

Notice what it does not contain: no dates, no job history, no list of surviving relatives. Those belong in the obituary. The eulogy is one story and one sentence that sounds like the person.

Reading it aloud

• Print it in large type, double-spaced. Phones lock and hands shake.
• Mark two places to breathe and one place to stop entirely.
• Read it out loud three times beforehand. The crying usually happens in rehearsal.
• Ask one person to be ready to finish it for you. Knowing they're there is usually enough that you won't need them.

If the words are for a memorial film rather than a room, write for narration: shorter sentences, more pauses, and one idea per line.