How to write a eulogy

If you have been asked to give the eulogy, you probably have a few days, very little sleep, and a blank page. This guide gives you a way through it. You do not need to be a writer or a confident speaker. You need a handful of true things about the person, put in a sensible order, in words you would actually say.

What a eulogy is for

A eulogy is not a full biography and it is not a list of achievements. Its job is to let the people in the room recognise the person they knew. If someone at the back thinks “yes, that was her”, it has worked.

That takes some pressure off. You are not summing up a whole life. You are choosing a few details that stand for it.

Before you write: check three things

Ask the funeral director or celebrant:

• How long you have. Most eulogies run somewhere around five to seven minutes. Chapels, particularly at crematoriums, are often booked in fixed time slots, so the length matters.
• Who else is speaking. If a grandchild is talking about fishing trips and a workmate is covering the career, you can leave those out.
• Whether the life story is being told elsewhere. Sometimes the celebrant reads the dates and places, or they are printed in the order of service. If so, you are free to talk about character instead. There is a separate guide to writing the printed tribute.

As a rough measure, people read aloud at a funeral more slowly than they expect. Around 120 to 130 words a minute is a fair guess, so a six minute eulogy is about 750 words, or a page and a half typed.

Gather before you shape

Do not start with the first sentence. Start with a list. Set a timer for twenty minutes and write down anything that comes, in any order:

• Things they said all the time
• What their hands were usually doing
• What they were stubborn about
• The food, the car, the chair, the shed, the garden, the team
• A time they surprised you
• What they did for other people without mentioning it
• What the house sounded like when they were in it

Then ring or message two or three other people and ask one question: “What is a story about them that you always tell?” You will get details you did not know, and you will find out which stories everyone shares.

Small, specific things do more work than large, general ones. “He was generous” slides past. “He kept a jerry can in the ute because someone on that road always ran out of fuel” stays with people.

A structure that works

You can change this, but when you are tired it helps to have a frame to fill in.

1. Say who you are. One sentence. Not everyone in the room knows you.
2. A short outline of the life. Where they were born, where they grew up, the work, the people. Keep it to a paragraph unless you are the only speaker.
3. Two or three stories or details. Each one should show a different side of them: how they worked, how they loved, what made them laugh.
4. What they gave you or taught you. Say it plainly, in one or two sentences.
5. A goodbye. Speak to the room, or speak to the person. Keep it brief.

A short worked example

This is an invented person, to show the proportions. A real eulogy would be longer in the middle.

My name is Karen, and Des was my father.

Dad was born in Narrogin in 1941, the third of five kids, and he left school at fourteen to work on the wheat bins. He met Mum at a dance in Wagin, told her he could waltz, and could not. They were married for fifty-eight years.

Dad fixed things. If you mentioned a dripping tap, he was at your door on Saturday with a washer in his shirt pocket. He never rang first. Half the people here have a gate, a mower or a back step that Des got to before you could say no.

He was not a talker. When I moved to Perth he did not say he would miss me. He serviced my car, filled the tank, and put a street directory on the passenger seat with our old address circled.

What I learned from him is that you can say most things by turning up.

Thanks for the lift, Dad.

Notice what is left out. There is no list of every job, no every grandchild by name, no claim that he was perfect. Three details carry it.

Writing about someone complicated

Not every relationship was easy, and not every person was easy. You do not have to pretend. You also do not have to settle anything from the lectern.

A useful rule is to say only what is true, and choose the true things that are kind. “Mum was hard to argue with and I stopped trying around 1998” is honest and the room will laugh, because they knew her too. If there is real hurt, it is fine to keep the eulogy short and factual, or to ask someone else to speak.

Humour, faith and tone

• Humour is welcome if the person was funny or the family is. Let it come from stories, not from jokes. One or two light moments are enough.
• Faith. In a religious service, ask the minister or priest where the eulogy sits and whether there are any expectations about content. In a non-religious service, you have more room. Either way, speak about belief as the person held it, not as you assume the room does.
• Other people’s words. A line from a poem or song they loved can help. Keep it short and say why it mattered to them.

Edit by reading aloud

Read your draft out loud, standing up, with a timer running. This shows you things the page hides:

• Sentences that are too long to say in one breath. Split them.
• Words you would never use in conversation. Swap them.
• Sections where your attention drifts. Cut them.

If you run over time, remove a whole story instead of trimming every paragraph. A eulogy with two full stories is better than one with four rushed ones.

Getting through it on the day

• Print it in large type, double spaced, with page numbers. Do not rely on a phone screen.
• Mark the places where you can pause and breathe.
• Take a glass of water up with you.
• Give a second copy to someone you trust, and agree beforehand that they will step up and finish reading if you cannot. Knowing that often means you will not need it.
• If your voice goes, stop, breathe, and wait. Nobody minds. A pause feels far longer to you than to the room.
• Look up at the end of a paragraph, not mid sentence. You do not need to perform.

It is also perfectly acceptable to write the eulogy and ask the celebrant or a relative to read it for you.

Afterwards

Keep the pages. People at the wake will ask for a copy, and family who could not travel will want to read it. Some families add the text to a memorial page or print it alongside the order of service.

The notes you made in that first twenty minutes are worth keeping too. The same details can feed other parts of the service, such as the photo tribute or the music. If the family would like a personal song written from those memories, Tribute Studios’ song studio is one place to start a draft.