Alexei Kapterev's "Presentation Secrets": Chapter 4, The Story's Unity

Chapter 4: The Story's Unity is all about structure. How to create a beginning, middle, and end to your presentation. At this point, you have your conflict mapped out, so you can begin to map out how you will present that conflict.

Basing his structure on the three-act structure used in screenwriting, Kapterev outlines his own four part one:

1. Exposition: Establish context, introduce yourself and the heroes of the story.
2. Problem: Introduce the conflicts, constraints, and challenges. 
3. Solution: The largest part, the meat of the presentation.
4. Conclusion: Summarize, discuss morals, implications, call for action.

Kapterev then analyzes Malcolm Gladwell's famous spaghetti sauce presentation and sees that it follows this structure but with a longer conclusion:

1. Exposition: 2 minutes
2. Problem: 2 minutes
3. Solution: 5 minutes
4. Conclusion: 8 minutes

Having too much or too little of either part is what he calls the problem of balance.

Exposition

• Too much: We wonder what's the point? We want emotion, conflict, and exposition just tells us facts. 
• Too little: The presentation doesn't establish common ground and we have trouble seeing the point again.
• Just right: 

1. Introduce the ground rules. Explain how long the presentation is and whether you would like questions during or at the end.
2. Introduce the hero. Introduce yourself, too, if you are different from the hero. Tell a short story about your qualifications.
3. Introduce the situation. Show statistics. Show how the problem came about and how bad it was.
4. Introduce the story. 

Problem

• Too much: Don't make your presentation into a horror story that is all about the problem. Explaining the problem is important, but you need to get to the solution, too.
• Too little: You need to motivate the audience, and that requires a problem.
• Just right: It serves as an emotional hook that makes the audience want to keep listening for the solution. The difficulty is saying something the audience doesn't know, something they don't already agree with. Show statistics, but provide context for them. We need to know how big of a problem it really is. But remember to be passionate about it. Show emotion.

Solution

• Too much: Goes along with not enough problem. They just list the facts, the solution, the things that they have. The problem is obvious, they claim.
• Too little: They think it's obvious. But if it's obvious, there's no need for the presentation. There's no emotion. Not a good story.
• Just right: After the problem, the audience is ready to listen. 

The solution part is difficult, and Kapterev goes through Richard Wurman's L.A.T.C.H. acronym to show different ways of presenting information, the many unifying metaphors people use. The point here is that presentations need some unifying principle. 

• Location: The chair, the wheel, the house. 
• Alphabet: Use an acronym that people will be able to remember. 
• Time: A sequence or narrative of events or how a process works. 
• Category: Keep it simple, with just several, i.e. three, categories. More than four and people have trouble remembering them.
• Hierarchy: Again, only three or four points here such as company goal, department goal, personal goal.

Conclusion

• Too much: Can come across as moralizing or abstract, without the necessary problem and solution parts. 
• Too little: Leave the audience with something to do. Don't leave them asking, "now what?"
• Just right: 
• Wrap-up--repeat the important points. 
• Call for action--leave them with something to do. 
• The moral--sometimes it doesn't work in business or technical presentations, but when it leads from the problem and solution, it can make everything else stick.