PowerPoint Presentation Guide - Edit Refine and Rearrange
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RazvanPowerPoint Presentation Guide - Edit Refine and Rearrange
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RazvanEdit: refine and rearrange
After brainstorming, take a step back. Begin to curate your ideas, picking out the ones
that best suit specific needs. This editing step typically takes longer than the
brainstorming part did, and you may continue to generate ideas as you work your way
through it.
Think about what framework could help you pull everything together in a way that will
make sense to someone else. How will you organize and order the content? Add new
stickies to categorize themes and start to arrange. Where might you benefit from
transitional content? Add notes. Are there opportuni- ties to combine similar ideas or
topics that could be aggregated in the same section? Put those stickies together, and
perhaps add a topic to group them. Identify where to incorporate data or illustrative
examples. Continue to rear- range, physically lifting and moving sticky notes around.
Add new ideas when necessary. Crumple up the ones that don’t serve your purpose.
The importance of intentional discard
On the topic of eliminating, let’s pause to discuss one of the biggest benefits of
storyboarding: intentional discard. When we start in our tools (like Power- Point or
Keynote), in addition to the issues I outlined earlier in this chapter, another problem is
the false belief that what we create must answer any ques- tion that arises. Whereas when
we start low tech, we can be thoughtful about each piece of potential content we
consider including and ask ourselves an important question: does this help me get
my Big Idea across? No? Cut it. Start a discard pile. Add to it without hesitation.
When I storyboard, I always have a discard pile. I’ll sometimes write down the same idea
five times and discard it five times because it takes this repetition for me to convince
myself that it (whatever it is) doesn’t belong in the commu- nication. If the idea has come
up this many times, it’s probably good to know the content or answer to the question in
the event it arises, but not every bit of relevant information has to have a home in my
presentation. This process of intentional discard leads to shorter, more effective
communications.
Storyboard at different levels for longer content
For longer presentations or written content, I often storyboard multiple times
and at different levels over the course of time. This typically starts broad and
then becomes increasingly granular as I plan the particulars. Let’s take this
book as an example.
First, I storyboarded the overall structure: the main sections and chap- ters
(it was an iterative method rather than a linear one to get everything to align
in a way that made sense to me). In some cases, I’d go a little deeper into
content ideas for a given chapter to get a sense of overall balance and to
keep track of the thoughts I had on what would best fit into a given area. As
I write these words, the high-level plan lives in a readily visible sticky note
outline on my office closet door. I reflect on it and periodically make
adjustments (while I’m mostly set now on what I’m writing about in the plan
chapters that include this one, I’m rethinking how to structure the create
chapters that come next).
While that’s happening at the meta level, I’m also focusing on a given
chapter at a time. I start each by storyboarding. I brainstorm and then ar- range
section topics, content ideas, sidebars, illustrative examples, and anecdotes.
For my writing, I don’t generally solicit feedback at this point (whereas I often
will if it’s a presentation that I’m planning). If I’m unsure about the
arrangement or approach, I’ll talk through it aloud to work it out. Then I start
writing, using the chapter storyboard I’ve created as my guide. There are
points where I’ll still get stuck and go back to the storyboard, rearrange, and
then try again. However, most often at this point, the editing shifts to the
written document (and continues there for quite some time!).
A similar strategy also works for longer presentations. Start by story-
boarding the general layout and have this be your overarching guide. Then
storyboard again at varying levels of granularity so you are able to see and
vet your plan before committing to it and creating content. After
storyboarding your general content, repeat the process for a given section. You
may storyboard again to plan the content for a given slide. Yes, this takes time
and effort. But as we’ve discussed, the amount of thought this forces you
to put into everything will raise the quality of what you create and guide you
to craft communications that better suit the given situation.
