See it done before you write it.

For a father

"For those who don't know me, I'm James, and Dad was my father for forty-one years. He was a man who fixed things — cars, fences, and other people's bad days. Let me tell you about the night he drove two hours in the rain because my first car broke down outside Sheffield. He didn't say much when he got there. He just looked at the engine, said 'right', and had it running in twenty minutes. That was the whole of him, really: show up, get on with it, don't make a fuss."

Why it works: one specific story (the two-hour drive) carries the entire character summary — "show up, get on with it" — so the reader learns the person through a scene, not a list.

For a mother

"Mum kept a tin in the kitchen cupboard. Birthday cards, theatre tickets, my first bus pass — every small thing any of us ever handed her. We found it last week and went through it together, and I don't think any of us managed it in silence. That tin was how she loved us: quietly, by keeping everything."

Why it works: the detail is physical and small — a kitchen tin — and the last line turns the object into the person's whole way of loving, which is what a eulogy is for.

For a friend

"I met Priya at university, in a queue for a lecture neither of us wanted to be at. She turned to me and said, 'If we leave now, they'll never know.' Twenty years of friendship started with us bunking off together. She was the friend who knew which silence needed filling and which one didn't — a rarer skill than any of us appreciated while she was here."

Why it works: it opens with the origin of the relationship (who you are to them), then lands the tribute in one precise observation — the two kinds of silence.