For a great speech or essay, try the Pith & Comet.

It’s just 40 words and a tail.

One of my recent clients is a hugely successful and highly innovative entrepreneur. He has a great story to tell and wisdom to share. The ideas are there; he’s just unsure about the storytelling and wisdom sharing. As Shakespeare’s prating Prospero would say, how could my client endow his purposes with words that make them known?

Prospero considered himself a master of purpose endowing, which makes him the patron saint of ghostwriters and speechwriters.

To aid his thinking while getting his writing game up, I assigned him one of my favorite exercises, called the Pith & Comet. I’ve assigned the exercise to a number of students and clients; after suffering through the four steps, the survivors tend to rave about it.

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The Pith & Comet Exercise

1. 40 Words

Draft 40 words for a particular concept. Then rewrite those words until ready to show them to the coach or teacher (me, in this case). I give specific comments to each iteration, suggesting ways to create more versions.

2. The Focus

After at least four rewrites (I make a less busy person do many more drafts), focus on the best draft. More rewriting.

3. Elements List

When that version finally seems ready, list all the “elements” of a potential essay or speech—facts, ideas, any quotes, whatever, including the 40 words—in no order. Some of the elements could come from all those other drafts.

4. The Sorting

Next, sort those elements in an order that might make a speech or essay. This usually takes at least several tries. But at the end you get a very good outline. You’re ready to write your masterpiece.

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I call the 40 words the Pith, as in the unbreakable seed of a peach, the center of a juicy idea. The ancients called this passage a period. Believing that our brains were wired to receive information lasting the length of a practiced orator’s breath, the Greeks built a 12- or 13-second climax, or period, into every major speech. And how many words create a period of 12 or so seconds? Right: 40 words. (Find more about the period, along with a video on movie and political periods, here.) You can always tell the beginning of a period in movies; that’s when the music wells up and we see the extras’ tears and awe.

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The moral to this exercise: Writing is thinking. Good writing is good thinking.

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But your Pith, your own perfect 40 words, don’t have to sit in any particular place. It can launch the beginning of an essay, or sit in the middle of a speech. Its main purpose is to focus your thought. My client says the exercise “gave me clarity.” It helped him think better.

And the Comet? That’s the list of elements that become an outline. Keep the Pith intact or distribute its sentences as separate elements. Now write a brilliant beginning with its compelling outline-tail.

The Pith or period helps teach students and clients the value of rewriting without the agony of doing multiple long drafts. It’s also a valuable way to think more openly, welcoming the variety of intepretations you can make with a single idea. Meanwhile, my editorial interventions help to de-cliché passages while showing how to make transitions, moving seamlessly from sentence to sentence.

The moral to this exercise: Writing is thinking. Good writing is good thinking.

In my client’s case, we may up with more than a TEDx talk. The Comet could provide the glowing conception of a book.

P.S. My book comes out on July 15. Please relieve me of the misery of making more Tik Tok videos by preordering it.