Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park, offer advice about storytelling that can help anyone creating a PowerPoint presentation.
Many Most PowerPoint presentations are ineffective, confusing, and/or boring because they lack cohesiveness and flow.
You know how it goes.
Presenters show a slide and discusses it. (You hope they don’t simply read it to you.) When they finish with that slide they say, “next slide.” Then they discuss it and say — you guessed it — “next slide.”
Entire presentations can be are a series of disconnected information and ideas: “There’s this and this and this and this and this…”
The unanswered question is: How does all of this hold together? How does one idea lead to another? Is there a logical connection?
The most important words in PowerPoint presentations aren’t on the slides: they’re between the slides.
The segues — the transition sentences — from one slide to another are what turn a series of disconnected information and ideas into an insight audiences can understand and use.
That’s where Parker and Stone come in.
In a lecture at NYU they describe how they create stories for South Park. On a large whiteboard they outline a series of “beats.” (A beat is the smallest unit of a story, a piece in which something happens.)
If the beats are linked by the words “and then,” Parker and Stone insist “You’ve got something pretty boring.”
They suggest eliminating every “and then” and replacing it with either “therefore” or “but.”
Not “this happened and then this happened,” but “this happened, therefore this happened” or “this happened, but then this happened.”
Try it the next time you prepare or practice a PowerPoint presentation. Every time you catch yourself saying “next slide,” substitute “therefore…” or “but…”
Figure out how the information or ideas on one slide lead into the information or ideas on the next. Do they build logically (“therefore…”)? Or do they logically raise an objection or another consideration (“but…”)?
As the expert you understand (I hope) how your material holds together. Don’t assume that your audience understands. Show them.
