Weather you’re giving a sales pitch or presenting for an important cause, you need to have multiple stories. You may have selected one story as the strongest and decided to use it. But, depending on the day of the presentation, you might need to use the other story.

With so much information to process these days, people are not able to focus very well. As a presenter, its your job to organize information in the presentation to keep the audience's attention. You have to pay attention to small details from the perspective of the audience. This article explains how organizing information properly helps people understand and focus on your message. Please Read The Slide Some presenters like to tell their audience to kindly read the slide. This is done because the presenter wants the audience to know those things before they continue with the presentation. Presenters don't usually do this because they want to help the audience. Usually, they just want to make their job easier. If that is you, then consider dividing such a slide into two parts. Once containing concise but important information only, and the other containing the explanation. Repetition of Subject Matter Many presenters do this quite often in their presentations. They want to summarize what they're saying using bullet points, but they have to keep mentioning certain topics over and over again. You may be drawing comparisons by explaining the before and after; similarities, or differences. In that case, you should not use a bullet points list, and instead try organizing the points side by side on a comparison table. This makes it much easier to understand the relation. Continued.. Many presenters continue a topic in multiple slides. They do this due to the fact they ran out of space on the previous slide. Writing Continued.. as the title of the slide is not the best way to do this though. You're basically asking the audience to remember what you showed them in the previous slide. Depending on the audience, some people might not have been able to do that. They are left listening and waiting for the next slide to introduce the next topic. An alternative to doing this would be to make a title for each slide. Try explaining your point by summarizing it on the slide using a graph, a chart, or some other visual representation. You can try dividing the topic into short sub-topic slides. Image Courtesy:  In a presentation to students and parents... by Tomwsulcer [CC BY 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons  

The Fruit Village and The Factory

Suppose that you’re going to be presenting your story of a fruit village that was negatively impacted by pollution from a new factory. Your presentation may have been focused on the legal side of the matter; the fact that the factory was illegally constructed too close to the village.

Why Keep More Than One Story?

There is a chance that you may need a different story. This can be caused by a major world event, a change in the venue, or attendance of a new influential members. In that case, you can use the other story if it will be even more effective.

Instead of legal issues, you can use the slides that talk about the lives for people in the fruit village and how they’re being pressured to not speak about their problem. Freedom of speech now supports that cause.

Keep The Core of The Message

Even when you choose to use another story, keep the core of the message intact. Keep a backup story especially if you feel that the main story is too risky to present.

Prepare Both Stories

As you’re preparing for the presentation, rehearse both the main and the backup story. This will make it easier to choose any one of them if the need does arise.

Present it Normally

Decide which version you should present on the day of the presentation. You don’t need to say anything about choosing another story to the audience. They don’t know that you had another story you could present but decided not to.

Stories are a powerful way to deliver your message. Make sure to put more effort into delivering them effectively.

Image: [CC BY 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons