Non-Designer's Presentation Book, The: Principles for effective presentation design, 2nd Edition

Chapter Six Plot

The plot of a presentation is its story line. A good plot has a beginning, a middle, and an end. As an audience, we like to be introduced to the presentation appropriately—we don’t want to jump right into the middle. We want to know where we’re going and what to expect. And when we’ve gotten to the end, we want to know we’re there. We also want to travel an interesting road, not a boring, monotonous one. We want peaks and valleys, dangers and lulls; we want to be interested in the process.

In a good film, the first five minutes (and often less) tells us what to expect: we know whether it’s a thriller, romantic comedy, film noir, documentary, action/adventure, science fiction, etc. And this is important to us because our minds ...