Available Content

Unless everything you say logically relates together, the listener will not see or remember your message.

Content Cards Form a Logical Heirarchy

Before we explain the details of each component, let's look at the big picture to see how your headline, story and illustrations all work together.

Whether you work with the physical SpeechDeck Content cards, replacement note cards, or the online outlining tool, the black and white content cards form the basis of your presentation outline.

Headline

You will complete one headline card H for each speech. The headline card will help you narrow down the overall objective and create a theme that ties all components of your presentation together into a cohesive whole--the headline.

Story

You will complete one story card S for each plot point or assertion in your presentation. Each story card summarizes a portion or your presentation in a one sentence sub-headline.

Illustration

You will complete one or more illustration cards i for each story card. You need only as many illustrations as it takes to prove the plot point or assertion in the parent story cards's sub-headline sentence. Each illustration card contains a one-sentence mini-headline.

Organize Your Content for Clarity

If you have a clear message you will be able to read the headline sentences, in order, from each of your black headline, story, and illustration cards. If those few sentences flow logically and cleary, you are done clarifying your content.

If you cannot read your content cards in order, you need to reorder and clarify the headline sentences on those black cards until a robot could give a 30 second summary of your speech, just by reading the headline sentences from the black cards.

In this way you separate the content (black and white) of your presentation from the delivery and style (color) of your presentation.

Completed, organized contents cards look like this:

  • H
    • S-i-i
    • S-i
    • S-i-i-i
At the top is your overall headline H, which sometimes may be the same as your title.

Down the left side, you have one story card S for each organizational sub-point. Each story card has a single sentence, or sub-headline, that relates the topic to the parent Headline card.

To prove the sub-headline of each story card, you may arrange one or more illustrations i following it. Each illustration card also has a single sentence, or mini-headline, that relates the illustration back to the sub-headline of its parent story card.

Clarity May Require Additional Story Cards

  • H
    • S-i-i
    • S
      • S-i-i
      • S-i
    • S-i-i-i

A long presentation or highly informational one, may be subdivided using additional Story Cards. For example, the diagram at right shows that one of the story points has been subdived into subsidiary points.

If you are using an outlining tool such as the online SpeechCrafter app, you simply break complex thoughts into several sub-points. If using physical note cards or SpeechDeck cards, you would add an extra level of cards.

For practical purposes, story cards and Illustration cards serve the same purpose. The purpose is to produce a one sentence summary-headline statement that relates back to the parent card.

The only practical difference is that Story cards are more organizational based, and will appear on the left side of the diagram. Story cards always have child illustrations. Illustrations are the most minor points, on the innermost (rightmost) level of the outline.

We use the term "Story" to refer to content at the parent level (left) that has multiple child parts, and the term "Illustrations" refers to the child content (right) to which we can apply specific techniques. Click here for tutorial on incorporating Colorful Techniques

Step 1: Start with the Greatest Clarity

No system, including SpeechDeck, can fit every person's personality perfectly. This is why we created SpeechDeck on cards.

There is not only one right way to write a speech, or one right order to organize your cards. Each SpeechDeck card is a single component that you can order in the way that fits your personality.

This means some people start preparing by using the headline card, but other people start with an illustration or story card. There is not one right way.

Headline, story, and illustrations are all required to be in a great presentation, but you should start with whatever is most clear for you.

If you already know your clear theme, then start with the Headline.

If you have a set list of topics you must cover, start with the Story.

On the other hand, maybe you're not quite sure about your overall theme, but you've been thinking about an example (illustration) that you really want to share. In that case start with the illustration card for that example.

Step 2: Complete other Content Cards

Once you have the headline or mini-headline sentence from the content card in step one, you should be able to expand your thoughts to complete all other content cards.

No matter which card you start with, you eventually must backup and develop one central headline for the whole presentation, a clear, logical storyline, and illustrations for each story point.

The following tutorials will go into more detail about each of these steps.