How to Write a Eulogy: A Step-by-Step Guide

Start with one specific memory.

Not a summary of who they were. Not a list of accomplishments. A single, concrete moment — the way they laughed at their own jokes before getting to the punchline, the smell of their kitchen on Sunday mornings, the particular way they said your name.

That one detail is your anchor. Everything else you write can orbit around it.

This is the most common mistake people make when starting a eulogy: they try to capture an entire life in five minutes. You can't. You're not supposed to. A eulogy isn't a biography — it's an invitation for everyone in the room to remember who this person was to them.

Structure: Don't overthink it

A eulogy doesn't need to be complicated. A simple structure works:

Open with something that brings the person into the room — that specific memory, a line they used to say, something about them that anyone who knew them would instantly recognize. This settles the room and grounds you.

Then spend the middle talking about who they were. Not a timeline of their life — more like a portrait. What did they care about? How did they treat people? What would they have said about being the subject of all this attention? If you have two or three short stories that illustrate something real about them, those are worth more than any amount of adjectives.

Close with something looking forward. What do you hope people carry out of this room? What part of this person will you hold onto? This is where you give the people who are grieving something to do with their grief.

Length: Shorter than you think

Five to seven minutes is the sweet spot. That's roughly 700 to 900 words when read at a calm, measured pace — slower than normal conversation, because you'll need the pauses.

If you go longer, you'll feel it in the room. People aren't checking out because they don't care — it's the opposite. Grief is exhausting, and the weight of a long speech can pull the energy down in a way that doesn't serve anyone.

Write it long first. Then cut. Everything that feels like filler probably is.

Write like you talk

Read every sentence out loud as you write it. If it doesn't sound like something you would actually say, rewrite it until it does.

Eulogies fail when they get formal. "He was a man of great integrity who touched the lives of many" tells no one anything. "He would drive forty-five minutes out of his way to drop something off if he said he would, and he never mentioned it afterward" — that's a person.

You don't need to use big words. You don't need to sound literary. You need to sound like yourself, talking about someone you loved. That's it.

What not to do

Don't try to summarize their whole life. You'll end up with a list of facts that doesn't feel like anyone in particular.

Don't avoid the hard parts entirely. If they struggled — with illness, with something they were working through — you don't have to dwell on it, but pretending it didn't exist can make the speech feel hollow to the people who were closest to them.

Don't write for the room. Write for one person — maybe the person you're eulogizing, or one family member who needs to hear it. The specificity that makes it real for them is what makes it real for everyone.

And don't read it cold. Practice until you can get through it once without stopping. You'll probably cry. That's fine. The pause is fine. The room will wait for you.

Getting the words out

The hardest part isn't writing the speech. It's sitting down to write when grief makes everything feel slow and impossible. A lot of people find it helps to just start talking — recording a voice memo, writing notes that aren't a speech yet, answering questions about the person as if you were telling a friend who never got to meet them.

From there, you can shape what you have into something worth saying.

If you're struggling to find a starting point, that's what this tool is for. You share stories and memories, and we draft a first version you can read, adjust, and make your own. It won't write the eulogy for you — but it can help you get past the blank page.