Presentations
How to structure a presentation
Structure is the order of the slides and nothing else. Get it right and average writing survives; get it wrong and good writing does not. Five patterns cover most business decks, and each one is written here as a sequence of slide kinds you can build directly.
The pitch: problem, solution, proof, ask
Cover, then an intro slide stating the problem as something that is true whether or not anyone buys from you. Then the solution, then proof, which is where metrics and testimonials earn their place. Then the ask, on an investment slide if money is involved. It fails when the solution arrives before the problem has been made to hurt, because an audience that has not felt the problem hears the solution as a product tour.
The sales deck: them, then you
Cover, an intro about their situation, a comparison of how it works today against how it could work, then what you do, then pricing, then proof, then next steps on a closing slide. The order matters more here than anywhere else: a sales deck that opens with your company history has spent its best three minutes on the least interesting slides, and the room decides early.
The training session: chunk, check, repeat
Cover, agenda, then repeating blocks of a divider, two or three content or checklist slides, and a quiz slide. The quiz is not decoration, it is the retrieval that makes the previous three slides stick. Close on a takeaway summarising the rules and a closing slide with who to ask. It fails when it runs as twenty content slides with a quiz at the end, because by then nobody remembers slide four.
The business review: numbers first, story second
Cover, then a metrics slide carrying the headline figures, because the room wants to know whether things are good before it hears why. Then a comparison against plan or last period, then content slides on what drove it, a timeline or process for what is being fixed, and a closing slide with the decisions you need. Opening a review with context is a common instinct and a mistake: the audience spends that whole slide waiting for the number.
The conference talk: one idea, three beats
Cover, an intro that is a hook rather than a summary, then three sections separated by dividers, each building one part of a single argument, then a takeaway that states the idea in one sentence, then a question break, then a closing slide with where to find you. A talk fails by having three ideas instead of three beats of one idea, which is a structural problem no amount of design fixes.
How it works, in three steps
Step 1
Write the order before the slides
A list of slide kinds in sequence. Ten lines in a text box, five minutes, and it saves an hour of rework.
Step 2
Paste that order into the generator
An outline of one line per slide is read as a specification, so set the length to your line count and each becomes a slide.
Step 3
Add a divider every four or five slides
Past ten slides an audience loses its place. A divider is the cheapest structural fix there is.
The full walkthrough with screenshots is in the guide Add, reorder and restructure slides.
Limits worth knowing
- These are conventions, not settings. Nothing in the product enforces or checks a structure.
- A slide's kind is fixed when it is created, so restructuring means adding and deleting slides rather than converting them.
- The generator hits your requested slide count almost exactly, so the count you choose is effectively the structure's budget.
- A free account is limited to six slides per generated deck, which is too few for four of these five patterns.
See it on a finished piece
Questions people ask
How many slides should a deck have?
Roughly one a minute when you are speaking, so a fifteen minute slot is not a twenty slide deck. Structure first, then set the length to match the order you wrote.
Should every deck have an agenda slide?
Only when the audience needs to know how long this will take and what is coming, which is true for training and reviews and rarely true for a pitch or a talk.
Where do the numbers go?
In a pitch, after the solution as proof. In a review, on the second slide as the headline. The same metrics slide in a different position is a different argument.
Can I hand the generator a structure?
Yes. Paste your order as one line per slide and set the length to the number of lines. The order is followed rather than reorganised.
Make your own presentation
The button opens the generator with this use case already described. Change the wording to match yours, generate, then edit anything you like.
Create a presentation with OneCraftRelated pages
Types of slides in a presentation
Every slide in this builder is one of twenty six kinds, and the kind is chosen before any words exist. Learning the list is worth ten minutes, because most weak decks are not badly written, they are slides doing a job they were not built for.
Outline to slides
This is the case where you are not asking for ideas. The structure is settled, agreed or handed to you, and the only job left is design and wording. An outline pasted into the prompt box is treated as a specification rather than a suggestion.
How many slides your presentation gets
One control decides more about the finished deck than the theme does. Slide count is not a suggestion to the writer, it is a target it is instructed to hit exactly, so choosing it badly produces a deck that is padded or crushed rather than one that is simply longer or shorter.
More finished work of this kind is on the presentation examples hub.