The narrative defines the slides, the slides don't define the narrative

The slides you include in your presentation should support an overall narrative or "story." As such, you should define your story prior to making slides. What is the problem? Why is it important? How am I approaching it? What results do I have so far? What have we learned? etc.

It is often difficult to articulate a narrative after months at the lab bench and many scientists begin the presentation process by creating slides. Slide making can get you thinking. That's OK, as long as you step back at some point and articulate your story in some type of narrative form. Otherwise you will end up with a largely meaningless collection of slides. The slides-narrative process can be iterative.

After defining the narrative, the process of slide making may lead you off in unanticipated (by the narrative) directions. Perhaps you remember some really exciting data that doesn't fit with the narrative. Fine, include it, but pull back and rewrite your narrative. A coherent narrative is the essential building block of a presentation.

Build the presentation "up," but start by building the narrative "down"

I argue in all my lectures and classes that a slide presentation needs to be built "up" from a core narrative. That is, define a simple narrative and add slides consistent with the time you have and the ability of the audience to understand complexity. Try developing a 3 minute presentation, a 5 minute presentation, etc. In other words think about what you can add, not what you can cut.

But the process of defining that core narrative works the other way. The first attempt at a narrative is likely to contain a lot of jargon and complexity. Try it out on a close colleague (person at the next lab bench) and he/she will tell you parts that they don't understand. Then try it out on a colleague with a little less specific knowledge (person in the next lab) of your research. Keep moving "down" the ladder of expertise until you can explain the narrative to what I call the least knowledgeable target listener. Not everyone, but the least knowledgeable person you hope to engage.

This two way flow is illustrated on the following slide. Narrative development is in blue, slide development in orange.

The "set up" slide, part 2

I want to bring attention back to the "set up" slide. This was the topic of an earlier tip, but every time I help someone with a presentation I'm reminded about the importance of the slide, or at least the logic that goes into the slide. Presenters who have not worked out this logic tend to develop presentations witout clear purpose.

Briefly, the "set up" slide is a slide that comes very early in the presentation (perhaps the first slide). It sets up the over-arching question for the presentation and the logic that motivates that question. As an example, here is a "set up" slide for my talk on how to do presentations.

The patter is as follows. On the proceeding slide (the presentation title slide) I argue that too many speakers develop presentations for themselves rather than thinking through audience information needs and what the audience can comprehend. Te narrative for the above slide is as follows: I will argue in my presentation that slides are inherently difficult to comprehend (bullet 1). I will also argue that scientific information adds to the challenge (bullet 2). I will also argue that most audiences contain listeners of varied expertise and the speaker may not have a good understanding of the range prior to walking in (bullet 3). Given these problems, the overarching question is how to help the audience.

The "set up" slide gives the audience an immediate understanding of what they can expect to learn in this talk. I articulate the overarching question in more detail later in the talk.

Whether or not you use a "set up" slide like the one above, or the one discussed previously, you need to work out an overarching question and a simple logic that motivates it. I would create a "set up" slide even if you decide not to use it in the presentation.