How to write a eulogy you can get through
A eulogy is about four minutes long, which is roughly 520 words. This page covers what to gather before you write, the five parts in the order that holds together, what belongs out of it, and how to stand up and read it on the day.
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What a eulogy is
A eulogy is a short spoken tribute given at a funeral or memorial service, usually by someone who knew the person well. Most run about four minutes, which is roughly 520 words at a spoken pace of 130 words a minute. It works best when it is built from specific ordinary memories rather than general praise.
If you're reading this late at night with a service in a few days, here is the short version. You don't have to summarise a life. You have to give a room of people one recognisable person to hold on to for four minutes. That is a smaller job, and it's one you can do.
Nobody there is assessing your writing. The eulogies that land aren't the eloquent ones — they're the ones where a detail comes up and half the room recognises it at once.
Before you write: what to collect
Most eulogies that go wrong went wrong before a word was written. The writer sat down to think of adjectives. Kind, generous, always there for everyone. All true, and all of it evaporates the second it's said, because it could be said about almost anybody.
A eulogy is downstream of specific memory. Not of praise. If you gather the right specifics first, the writing takes an hour; if you don't, you'll spend the night rearranging words that were never carrying anything.
So don't start writing. Start remembering, on paper, in whatever order it comes. These are the questions our eulogy interview asks, and they work just as well on a legal pad at the kitchen table:
- Who were they, to the people who knew them best?
- What did their hands look like when they worked?
- Describe an ordinary day with them. Not a birthday or a holiday — a Tuesday.
- Was there something they always said?
- What did they teach you without meaning to?
- What will you miss most?
The one about hands surprises people. It's the most useful question on the list, and the reason is plain enough: an abstraction about a person is forgettable, and a specific is not. "She was a hard worker" leaves no trace. Flour to the wrist, a wedding ring on the windowsill above the sink, one knuckle that never straightened after 1987 — that stays. It stays because it's a picture, and a room can hold a picture.
Answer more than you'll use. Six good answers give you a eulogy; two give you a paragraph you'll pad. If a question brings up something you can't write down yet, leave it and come back — that's usually the one the speech ends up being built from.
Asked to write a eulogy for a mother, a one-line prompt has nothing to work with but the word mother, so it gives back what any mother might have been. That's the whole difference, and it's set out at length in why an interview beats one prompt.
The five parts, in order
This is the spine. Each part answers one question and hands the room to the next. The word counts below add up to about 520 — four minutes at 130 words a minute. Scale them if your slot is different.
A full worked version, annotated section by section, is on the example eulogy for a mother. The lines quoted here are short illustrations only.
Who they were, in one plain sentence
The room is mixed. Some people knew them for fifty years and some knew them from the bowls club. Your first job is to give everyone the same starting picture, in a sentence that a stranger could repeat afterwards.
WeakMum was a wonderful woman who touched everyone she met.
SpecificMy mother taught year three at Ashfield Primary for thirty-one years. She could not get through the high street without being stopped by somebody who had once been eight.
Say your name and how you're related, then this. Don't open with a dictionary definition of grief, and don't thank people for coming — the officiant has already done it.
The ordinary day
Now put the room inside a normal day. This is the part people underestimate and it's the part that does the most work, because birthdays and holidays look roughly the same in every family. A Tuesday belongs to one person only.
WeakShe was always busy, always doing something for someone.
SpecificUp at six. Radio on low so as not to wake anyone. One slice of toast eaten standing at the counter, out the door by ten past seven with a bag of marking she had already finished on Sunday.
Small physical facts do the lifting. What they wore. What the house smelled like. What was always on the passenger seat. You're not describing a routine — you're rebuilding a room people used to be able to walk into.
The one story that shows rather than tells
One story. Not three. The most common structural mistake in a eulogy is three fifty-word stories, none of which is given room to become a story, so the room hears a list.
Tell it in order, with the boring bits left in. Where you were. What was said. What went wrong. The detail that seems too small to include is generally the one that makes it real — the wrong turning, the burnt pan, the fact that it rained all week.
Here's the test. When you stop, the room should be able to name the quality without you having said the word. If you have to finish with "and that just shows how generous she was", the story hasn't done its job — and the sentence won't rescue it.
What they taught you
Not a motto. Not a saying off a card. The thing they taught you without ever sitting you down to teach it, which is why it took until now to notice.
WeakShe taught me the value of hard work and family.
SpecificShe never let me leave a job half finished, and I still don't know how she managed it without once raising her voice.
If they had a phrase they always used, this is where it goes. Say it in their words and their rhythm, not tidied up. The room will hear the voice, and that is worth more than anything you could write around it.
What you'll carry, and the closing address
Name one thing that will keep happening. Not everything — one. The bulb they planted that comes up every March, the recipe you now cook wrong, the phrase your own children have started using without knowing where it came from.
Then, if you want to, turn and speak to them directly for a sentence or two. Short. Ordinary words. Then stop and sit down.
Two things not to do. Don't summarise what you've just said — the room was there. And don't end on a line that isn't yours; if "rest in peace" isn't how your family talks, it will sound borrowed, because it is.
Choosing what to leave out
A eulogy is not a full account, and it was never supposed to be. It's four minutes at a service where people who loved the same person are sitting in rows. Four things stay out.
- Family conflict. The estrangement, the will, the years nobody spoke. A funeral isn't where any of that gets settled, and raising it in public takes the day from everyone who came to grieve.
- The illness, in clinical detail. Ward numbers, treatment cycles, the last night. Many of the people listening were there for it and are trying not to be back in that room. One plain sentence about a long illness is enough, if you need one at all.
- Anything a sibling would object to hearing in public. The rule is simple: if you would need to warn them beforehand, ask them beforehand. Then honour the answer.
- Anything that makes you the subject. How hard this has been for you, how you found out. It's all real, and it belongs somewhere other than the four minutes that were given to them.
Leaving something out is not dishonesty. You are choosing what to say in a short time in a public room — that's a decision about occasion, not about truth. Nobody is owed a complete accounting at a funeral, and the version you give here doesn't cancel anything you know.
Our interview asks up front who's in the room and what's off limits, and those exclusions are honoured absolutely. The draft records what it left out and why, so you can check the omission was the one you meant.
How long, and why
People speak at about 130 words a minute at a lectern. That's the whole of the arithmetic, and it's why four minutes comes to roughly 520 words. Most services leave room for three to five. If you haven't been told, ask the funeral director rather than guess.
| Length | Words | What fits |
|---|---|---|
| 2 minutes | 260 | One story, told properly, and a closing line. Nothing else. |
| 3 minutes | 390 | The opening sentence, one story, and what they taught you. |
| 4 minutes | 520 | All five parts, complete. The usual shape. |
| 5 minutes | 650 | Five parts, with the ordinary day given proper room. |
| 6 minutes | 780 | Two stories. More than most services have space for. |
Grief slows you down, and the arithmetic doesn't know that. A page that timed at four minutes in the kitchen can take five and a half at the front of a church. Plan for the shorter end of whatever you've been given.
Read it aloud with a clock at least once, standing up, in the voice you'll actually use. Word counts for every other common length are in the guide to speech length and timing.
Getting through it on the day
Almost everyone is frightened of this part, and almost everyone manages it. Most of what helps is physical.
- Print it at 16pt or larger. Double-spaced, one side of each page, numbered, never stapled. Eyes don't work properly when you're upset, and a 12pt page you read fine yesterday becomes grey mush at the lectern.
- Mark the pauses. A slash where you breathe, a longer mark where you'll need a moment. Written pauses are permission, and having them on the page stops a silence feeling like a failure.
- Decide in advance who takes over, and tell them. Hand them a copy. Agree a signal — a nod, a step back. Knowing there's a plan is often the reason you never need it.
- Hold the lectern. Both hands, at the edges. It steadies your arms and it gives them something to do besides shake.
- One breath before you start. Look up. Wait until you're ready rather than until the silence feels long. It always feels longer to you than to them.
- Water within reach. Ask for it beforehand. Stopping to drink is a completely normal thing to do halfway through.
If you do stop, stop. Nobody is timing you and nobody thinks less of you. Take the drink, find your line number, carry on. A room at a funeral is the most forgiving audience you will ever stand in front of.
The delivery tools included in the $24 exist for exactly this. Stage directions — where to pause, where to look up — are stored separately from the prose, so they never count toward the spoken time. The teleprompter carries a pace timer, because nerves make almost everybody run fast. The cue cards print large.
Speaking for a parent, a partner, a sibling, a friend or a grandparent
The five parts hold whoever you're speaking for. What changes is the material you're holding and who else in the room is holding it too.
You are one of several people who lost them
Half the room knew them as a colleague or a neighbour and never saw them be a parent. Give the ordinary day early so everyone recognises the same person, then say the one thing only a child could say.
Check with your siblings before using a story that includes them. It costs one phone call.
You hold the material nobody else has
The small routines are yours alone — the side of the bed, the tea made without asking, the argument you had every year about the same thing. That's the eulogy.
Keep the closing address short. You are carrying more than anyone else in the building, and a shorter speech is not a lesser one.
You knew them at both ends
Nobody else in the room saw them as a child and as an adult. Use that gap. One story from before anyone else present had met them is worth more than anything from the last decade.
Their partner and children are listening. Give them the person they knew as well.
You got the off-duty version
Family saw the parent or the spouse. You saw whoever they were when none of that was on. Say how you met, plainly, and say what you were to each other — the family may genuinely not know.
Then hand the room back gently. The front row is the immediate family.
Distance lets you carry a longer life
You can take in decades your parents are too close to. Ask them for the years before you existed — one detail from a grandparent's twenties changes the whole room's picture of who was in the coffin.
Grandchildren are often given a shorter slot. Two minutes done well is plenty.
When this won't help
Three cases, stated plainly, because finding out at the wrong moment is worse.
If the family wants a religious liturgy written — an order of service, a homily, prayers set in a particular tradition — that is the officiant's work and not ours. We write the personal tribute that sits inside the service, not the service.
If the celebrant is writing and delivering the eulogy from a family meeting, which is common and often the right call, then your job isn't to write a speech at all. It's to give them the specifics. The six questions in the collecting section above are still worth answering; hand the answers over and the celebrant will have something real to work from.
And if you can't or won't answer questions about the person, this isn't for you. The interview takes real memories as input. Without them a free one-prompt tool will produce something faster, and it will sound exactly like what it is. What the $24 covers, and what the two optional add-ons are, is listed on the pricing page.
Common questions
How long should a eulogy be?
About four minutes, which is roughly 520 words at 130 words a minute. Most services leave room for three to five minutes.
Plan for the shorter end. Grief slows delivery, and a page that times at four minutes at home often runs longer at the lectern.
How do I start a eulogy?
Say your name, how you're related, and then one plain sentence that gives the room a recognisable picture of the person. Something like what they did for thirty years, and what happened when they walked down the high street.
Skip the thanks for coming — the officiant has covered that. And skip anything that begins by defining grief.
What if I can't get through it?
Decide in advance who will take over, hand them a printed copy, and agree a signal. Most people who arrange this never use it, but knowing it exists is what makes the first minute possible.
If you need to stop, stop. Take a drink of water, find your line number, and go on. Nobody in that room is judging the pause.
Is it alright to say something difficult?
A eulogy can be honest without being a full account. A person who was hard work in some ways can be described warmly and truthfully at the same time, and most people in the room already know.
What stays out is anything a close family member would object to hearing in public. If you'd have to warn them first, ask them first, and honour the answer.
Can more than one person speak?
Yes, and it often works better than one long tribute. Two or three people at two to three minutes each gives the room several angles on the same person.
Agree who covers what beforehand, or you'll get the same story told twice. One person takes the childhood, one takes the work, one takes the last years.
How do I write a eulogy in a day?
Spend the first hour remembering rather than writing. Answer the six questions — the ordinary Tuesday, the hands, the thing they always said — and write down more than you'll use.
Then build the five parts in order and stop at about 520 words. Read it aloud once, standing, with a clock. That is the whole method, and it fits inside an afternoon.
What does it cost?
$24, paid once. That covers the interview, the speech written from your answers, unlimited revisions, printable cue cards, a teleprompter with a pace timer, a night-before tips sheet, and a private link that keeps working.
There's no subscription and no account needed to buy. Two add-ons are offered at checkout and neither is pre-ticked: a second speech built from the same interview for $10 more, and a human review with notes back within 24 hours for $29 more.
Start with one Tuesday
The interview asks one question at a time and waits for a real answer. Eight questions for a eulogy, in whichever of the five roles you're speaking in. You can write the draft yourself from everything above — the method is all here, and it's yours either way.
$24 paid once · Unlimited revisions · No account needed
Say what you actually mean, in the words you'd choose.