Remember your speech class from high school or college? Remember the rules they gave you for a good speech.
Now think of the famous speeches from history–”Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech, The Gettysburg Address, “I Have a Dream” speech. According to those speech-class rules, Patrick Henry, Abe Lincoln, and MLK would have received C grades at best.
Rules can be toxic–poisoning us from achieving greatness. Learn the rules, but don’t be bound by them. Ultimately, creativity is about communication. And communication is about getting your point across. Sometimes your point isn’t best expressed like this:
It’s said that over 50,000 people died on this battleground. (attention getter)
Hello, my name is Abraham Lincoln. Today I would like you tell you about (1) dedicating this field as a memorial and (2) encouraging you to keep fighting for your country. (introduction)
And so on…