About the Beyond Bullet Points story template

By Cliff Atkinson, Sociable Media

Professional Hollywood screenwriters can spend years learning their craft. Obviously, you might not have time to study Aristotle or learn the art of Hollywood screenwriting before next week's board meeting. You need to produce a Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 presentation now.

To help you build a better presentation, the fundamentals of both screenwriting and creating a classic story structure have already been adapted to your PowerPoint needs and incorporated into the Beyond Bullet Points story template. The information that follows gives you an overview of how this template can help transform your presentations into a story that motivates your audience.

 Note   You can learn more about this template, and the Beyond Bullet Points method, in Cliff Atkinson's book Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire.

Apply storytelling techniques to your presentation

In addition to a classic story structure, the Beyond Bullet Points story template incorporates persuasive techniques that are useful for many types of presentations in different contexts. These techniques include using Aristotle's classical concept that to persuade, you need to appeal to emotion, reason, and personal credibility. Even if your intent is to simply inform audience members about something, you still have to persuade them to pay attention. Why should they listen? What's in it for them? Using this template helps you to answer these questions for your audience.

How to use the template

Before you begin entering your presentation content, set up the template by adding a title and byline.

1. In the top cell of the template, replace the text Insert story title and byline here with the title of your script.
2. Create a byline that follows the title of the script. Here is an example:

Now that you've added a title and byline, the story template is ready for you to start writing your script in PowerPoint. The template includes the three sections, or acts, which compose a classical story structure and correspond to the beginning, middle, and end of your story. Each act in the template is delineated by a horizontal black bar extending across the page.

1. Act I begins a story by setting up all of the key story elements, including the setting, the main character, a conflict, and the desired outcome.
2. Act II drives the story forward by picking up on the conflict in Act I and developing it through the actions and reactions of the main character in response to changing conditions.
3. Act III ends the story by framing a climax and a decision that the main character must face to resolve the situation, revealing something about his or her character. This time-tested structure keeps your audience interested in your presentation and eager to find out what happens next.

You don't have to be an expert storyteller; the template makes structuring your story as easy as filling in the blanks. The horizontal rows in your template represent scenes. In these rows, you add text that describes what is happening at each point in your story. As you fill in the blanks, you are actually writing your story presentation. When you've finished filling in the blanks, you'll have a completed one-page or two-page script.

This built-in process ensures that you stay focused on your ideas and include all the elements that make up a good story. In addition, this template helps you think about your ideas in a systematic way that distills your complicated ideas to their essence. This approach can help you focus on developing one clear story — which you can also interpret visually in a variety of ways.

Ensure success by using your Beyond Bullet Points story template to persuade your audience to focus on your message.

About the author    Cliff Atkinson, president of Sociable Media, is a leading authority on how to improve communications across organizations. This article is adapted from Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire, which is available from Microsoft Learning.