3. Generate

When all your ideas for key points and content elements are captured, you are ready to generate the raw content you need for your presentation.

In this section we focus on some methods for generating this content easily, powerfully and effectively. The content will be shaped and refined later, so our goal here is to use the bullet points we’ve developed to get out of our own way and capture as much of the content and thinking that we have in our heads.

There are many creative ways that you can use to begin generating this content. The simplest one is to re-read your framing notes and jot down what immediately comes to mind at each stage of the story arc. Another method, which we describe below, involves doing a verbal brain dump to record your thoughts and review.

Use whatever technique you are comfortable with when it comes to brainstorming that fits your needs, but we do encourage you to take into account the questions we pose in sub-section 1.

The Verbal Brain Dump Technique

Doing this kind of directed brand-dump will help you feel clear about your thoughts, and also prepare you with more than enough material to work from in the integrate and refine stages. To ease the process here’s a step by step technique for generating content effectively.

1. Prepare to generate 🔨

Take a moment to reflect on the overall Intention that you’ve defined for your presentation. With this intention in mind, reread your content ideas. For each section ask yourself the following questions:

“What does it look like for my intention to come to life as I’m sharing these points?”

“Is there any information, stats or reference material that I might need on hand to be able to deliver these points?” (if so, gather this material now)

“What is one short starter phrase (usually half a sentence) that I might naturally say as I launch into each part of this presentation? (Write this phrase down for each section. We’ll be using it as a prompt in the next stage)

2. Flow and Capture 🎬

Now that you have your sense of intention, your reference material and your starter phrases ready for each of your content sections, now its time to generate a content brain-dump.

One powerful way to do this is to talk through the content out loud and use a free voice to text transcription service such as

https://www.otter.ai⁠

to capture and transcribe your dictation. This will enable you to step back and just experience yourself talking through your notes. Just press record, and then go one section at time, reciting your intention for that section back to yourself and then saying the starter phrase to kick yourself off into talking through the content elements and ideas in that section.

Make sure to fully express and explain all your thoughts out loud. You can even go back over parts if you feel you might have more to say. Take your time - you can edit this later.

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Back to

2. Frame⁠

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Next Step

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4. Integrate⁠

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