Beyond Bullet Points I: Telling a story with your presentation

Beyond Bullet Points III: Delivering your presentation

If you're like most people who use Microsoft Office PowerPoint, creating a presentation by starting with a series of bullet points is probably second nature. Although bullet points make it easy to create PowerPoint slides, they don't always make it easy for audiences to understand what you want to say.

In his best-selling book Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire (Microsoft Press, 2005), leading communications consultant Cliff Atkinson outlines an innovative PowerPoint method. His technique can help you focus ideas, coordinate words and images, and create an engaging narrative — all without the use of a single bullet point.

In "Beyond Bullet Points I: Telling a story with your presentation," you can learn how to use the Beyond Bullet Points story template to develop a story structure. A completed story template provides a focused and compelling structure for your presentation in only one to two pages.

Using these articles and tools, you can learn how to transfer the statements from your story template to PowerPoint. Then, borrowing from techniques used in the film industry, transform your PowerPoint file into a storyboard. Storyboards help you shift from creating a presentation of individual slides to creating slides that work together to tell your story, just like the frames in a filmstrip. And by using the notes pages feature in PowerPoint, you can coordinate your spoken words with the visuals that you show on each PowerPoint slide.

By the time you've completed your PowerPoint storyboard by using Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points method, you've gained confidence in your subject matter and in the story you'll be telling.

• Create a storyboard (Article)
  Transfer your Beyond Bullet Points story template into PowerPoint to create a storyboard.
• Plan your spoken words (Article)
  Use the notes pages feature of PowerPoint to plan a crisp and compelling narrative for your presentation.
• Use 3 rules to create storyboards (Article)
  Follow these rules to get the most out of the storyboarding technique.
• The Beyond Bullet Points story template (Template)
  This story template is the foundation of the Beyond Bullet Points method. Use it to write a script for your presentation.
• Design efficiently with masters (Training)
  Learn how to make formatting changes to all of your PowerPoint slides.
• About notes (Article)
  Learn how to make formatting changes to all of the notes pages in your PowerPoint slides.