Writing and Speaking

I think you are absolutely correct, prewritten speeches, even if memorized, rarely translate well into a live speech. They usually come off as either forced, too structured, and feel like a movie that's been hastily adapted from a book.

There's a reason for the saying "it's 10 percent what you say and 90 percent how you say it." Written versus spoken words convey different things. When you're giving a talk, or listening to one, there's a sort of energy exchange that happens. A really good charismatic speaker can make every person in the room feel like they are being directly spoken to, regardless of what the topic is (Bill Clinton is famous for this). Someone who has just been in the presence of a good speaker might not remember every word in the talk, but they have a sense of personal empowerment and motivation to go do or be something.

The written word, on the other hand, can trigger those emotions, though it engages on a different level. It's an individual, rather than a group relationship. If you're in a crowd watching a good speaker, you're sharing that experience with everyone in the crowd. If you're reading a book or essay, you're sharing that moment specifically with the author, and perhaps with the topics or characters in the essay.

A lot of good speakers and writers alike will formulate a narrative that people can relate to. One of my favorite examples of this in writing is Charles Petzold's book "Code", where he demonstrates how to create a basic computer, from the ground up. The book in itself is a sort of story, where the main caricature is the advances in logic and thought over the years. He manages to take a topic that is often dry and boring (truth tables? binary arithmetic?) and creates a form people can relate to.

There's also a lot to be said for confidence. If a speaker is confidence, people in the room will entrust them with a sense of authority. If a writer is confident, I'm more likely to continue reading on. To describe confidence in a writer... if you consider a speaker's ability to sidestep "um" and "ya know", and their control either to not ramble offtopic or to quickly bring their ramble full circle back to the topic at hand, then also look at a writer's ability, rather than stumbling around with words, to grasp them and use them with a magician's mastery. That is, they've gotten past memorizing the alphabetic building blocks, and began to create more elaborate form and structures.

Ok, now I want to write an essay on this... :)

To me, the power of speaking is that it temporarily creates a shared reality where the listener can actually be in the mind of the speaker. Several people here have mentioned hearing PG speak and finally understanding the sense of curiosity that produces so many of his ideas. Maybe the idea itself isn't quite as clear, but the inspiration that lead to the idea is more obvious, and that's often just as important (teach a man to fish...).

I do not agree with you, you can be a good speaker and a good writer, but maybe you need to see it first to believe it is possible.

The main problem is that you don't believe it is possible. Ancient Greeks were masters of this. Learn a good book about memorization, odds are that you are are highly kinesthetic so I would recommend you the Greek method of associating ideas or concepts to places, like the roof, or the person in the first row, or the chair. Greeks were talking while walking.

You only memorize the ideas in the order that you wrote them and then you can be free and "fill the gaps".

It is very important that you do not put pressure on yourself to do that but enjoy it as an experiment. It is really fun and the outcome will be impressive for your audience.