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Keep focused on saying what's important for the audience to walk away with. If partway through your speech you realize that the flow you created before your speech is not going to work, change it. Humanness and honesty should prevail over continuing a presentation that is not made for your audience. Be flexible. Change the flow and the order if you sense that would meet your audience's needs better.
The Plot-Point Theory of Organizing
Some presentations just seem to have more impact on the audience and cause them to discuss the content and/or to do the suggested recommendations. Some presentations, even though all the content is there, seem to fall flat. For many of these, it's a matter of reorganizing the content.
For example, Claudyne watched a colleague give a beautiful one-hour presentation that included gorgeous pictures from around the world. After about thirty minutes, She started to get tired. When it was over, she talked about her fatigue to a colleague who writes movies for television. The colleague explained what the plot points are in a movie and suggested that the presenter needed to include some plot points.
What are plot points? They are the two pivotal moments in a television film script. Plot Point One usually occurs twenty to thirty minutes into the film and starts the major action of the movie. Something unexpected occurs to the hero and galvanizes him or her toward a goal. Plot Point Two occurs about seventy minutes into the film when it appears that the hero is beaten. At this point an event occurs that causes everything to change with the hero. The hero's goal becomes reachable. These plot points keep the audience awake with eyes glued to the screen.
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How can you apply the idea of plot points to a presentation? Let's start with your graphics. Don't use all your fancy bells and whistles during the first few minutes. You may have the capability to show video clips, but you don't need to hit the audience with everything at the beginning of your speech. You can have a different slide template or background to distinguish between Plot Point One and Plot Point Two. Then add a different slide look for Plot Point One. Or change the way you are presenting the information from builds to showing all the data at once. Use a section slide background to introduce a change in topics or products.
Your speech is unlikely to be as long as a movie. But if it is, you really need to include some changes. You don't need to change every slide, but do consider how to maintain your audience's interest by varying the pace and design of the presentation slides. Take advantage of presentation variety: color, movement, pictures, style, and design. Use sound only when it is appropriate. Most people do not like to hear sound when the bullets wipe right.
What other types of plot points can you create? Even the act of turning up the lights and taking questions during the speech will change the dynamics in the room. You can tell a story that uses the plot-point concept. In the sidebar below, there's a story from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Notice how the tone goes from the problem diseases in the past to the present situation with antibiotics, then to the change (plot point) when the UCS Hogging It report was released.
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