The idea: If a story is a powerful way to inform, engage and
bring about change, could the use of presentation graphics make the
story into a 'movie', and hence make it richer and more powerful still?
Cliff Atkinson's new book Beyond Bullet Points,
which proposes to end once and for all the cruelty of subjecting your
audience to slides full of mind-numbing bullets, sentences and numbers,
is, ironically, published by Microsoft Press. I read it because it
tells you how to accompany a story with slides. In previous posts I've described
the power of narrative to open the listener up to the possibility of
change, to make a vision real and compelling, to teach and provoke and
inform in a memorable way. What this book does is providea process to
supply the pictures to go along with the story, so your presentation
becomes "a blend of movie and live performance".
The process has three steps: Writing a script to focus your ideas,
storyboarding the script to clarify the ideas, and producing the script
to engage the audience. My previous posts have told you about the art
of crafting a good story. The storyboard for a movie script is actually
sketches of visuals, but for purposes of this book it's merely parsing
of the critical parts of the story onto successive slides. Then you use
graphics -- and few words -- to reinforce the key points of the story
with memorable images.
The book presents a story template (reproduced above), which you can also purchase as a PowerPoint add-in, or download
in Word from Cliff's site, to organize both the writing and
storyboarding process. The book takes you through a simple example
using the template, but also provides variations and an extensive
bibliography of resources to help you craft and storyboard your story
like a pro. The first 5 slides ("Act One") engage the audience
emotionally. The next set of slides (3 for a 3-minute explanation, and
additional 9 for a more detailed 12-minute explanation, and an
additional 27 for a more detailed 39-minute explanation, one minute per
slide), lays out the rationale for the proposed solution from Act One.
In 3 minutes you can explain why your solution makes sense, in 12 you can explain why and how, and in 27 you can explain why, how and how you know.
The 'power of three' is a classical story-telling device and also used
to support deductive and inductive logic in debates and professional
research papers. It's the Pyramid Principle turned sideways, and the structure of Elevator Pitches.
Then "Act Three" resolves and restates, again using classic storytelling structure.
The book goes into great detail on how to compose slides, again with an
extensive bibliography of resources for graphical layout. Both the
sample story and the sample graphics are pretty vanilla, but they're
just for illustration. The value of the book is in the framework
it lays out. Use it in connection with some of the cited resources on
expert story-telling techniques, expert graphic design and composition,
and you should be able to create an impressive, professional and
compelling story with slides that accentuate and reinforce rather than
distracting from the story. And no bullet points!
Sometimes a movie can actually detract from the story by imposing
visuals instead of allowing the audience to supply their own, and to
make themselves the 'hero' of the story. Is there a danger that by
using visually rich slides you could find that more is less?
I think it depends. If you're a confident and animated speaker, you
probably don't need any slides at all to make an effective 'production'
that will be impressive and memorable to your audience. And while it's
unwise to clutter your slides with a lot of text that will focus the
audience on the slides instead of on what you're saying, it can be
equally unwise to have lots of slides with trite and amateur graphics
("low production values" as they put it in the biz). The rule for
compelling composition is the same for visuals as it is for words -- if
it doesn't add anything, get rid of it.
Since I've stopped using bullets on slides and started telling stories instead, I tend to use slides only
for memorable quotations, tables and charts. That means I'll often go
into a 20-minute presentation with only three slides. Until I become a
more accomplished story-teller I may try this book's advice both to
structure my story in a more disciplined manner, and to 'fill in' the
slide deck with some interesting visual images -- probably photos of
the business or other setting the story is about, to set context
for the story without impeding the audience's ability to fill in the
details themselves and personalize and internalize the story as their
own.
The book also mentions the most important element of any presentation
-- eliciting interactivity and participation by the audience. This is
just as important with a story, and requires a subtle touch -- putting
off all questions until the end is a sure way to put the audience to
sleep until that time, but an awkward or unsuccessful elicitation can
quickly make your professional production look very amateur.
I'd be interested in your thoughts on three matters: Who tells great
stories, and how does their structure differ from the template above?
What's the most impressive, graphically speaking, slide deck you've
ever seen, and is it available online? And what techniques have you
found work best to get just the right amount of quality audience
participation?
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