Presentation copy and speaker notes

What presentation copy is

Presentation copy is the written content of a talk: the words that appear on each slide, and, written separately, the words the speaker says while that slide is up. It covers conference sessions, client workshops, board updates, staff briefings, training days and any other occasion where someone stands up and talks over pictures for longer than ten minutes.

It is not a pitch deck. A pitch deck is a specific kind of presentation carrying a sales or investment argument, usually short, usually read as often as it is presented. This is the general case, where most of the meaning is spoken and the slides exist to support a person who is in the room. It is also not slide design; I write for whoever builds the deck, or straight into the template you already use.

When you need one

You need this when the slides are written to be read aloud. That is the usual failure, and it is fatal in both directions: the audience reads faster than the speaker talks, so they finish the slide and stop listening, and the speaker ends up narrating text the room has already absorbed. You need it when a talk has to be given by more than one person and sound like the same talk. And you need it when a session runs long every time, which is almost always a structure problem rather than a speaking problem.

You do not need it if the argument itself is unsettled. If three people in the business would answer “what is this talk for” three ways, start with the three points you want remembered and build the talk from them. And if the deck is sound and simply too long, cutting it back is cheaper than having it written again.

What I write

• The running order. The talk as a list of what happens in what order, with minutes against each part, agreed before a word of it is written.
• The slide copy. Short. A headline that states the point of the slide, and at most a few supporting lines. Where a slide should be a picture or a single number, the copy says so and briefs what it shows.
• The speaker notes. A separate document, written the way the speaker talks, with the sentences worth getting exactly right marked as such and the rest left as prompts.
• The joins. The opening ninety seconds, the sentence that moves the talk from each section to the next, and the close. These are where a talk is won or lost and where nobody prepares.
• The questions. The six or seven things the room will ask, with a short spoken answer for each, written before the day rather than improvised on it.

What you get

The slide copy. One document, one page per slide: the headline, the on-screen lines and a one-line brief on what the slide should show. Dropped into your template if you have one.

The speaker notes. A second document, matched slide for slide, in spoken English rather than written English. It can be read from a lectern, and it can be printed for the person who has to give the talk when the original speaker is unwell.

The run sheet. One page with the timings, the cues, the point at which you are half-way, and what to drop first if the session is cut short.

A worked example

An illustration. The owner of a 30-person commercial millwork shop is given a 40-minute slot at a regional construction association meeting. The existing deck has 52 slides carried over from a sales presentation, with full paragraphs on most of them, and in rehearsal it runs to 70 minutes.

The running order comes first and settles the talk at one argument: that shop drawings approved late are what actually delay a fit-out, and there are three points in a project where a general contractor can prevent it. Fifty-two slides become eighteen. Four of them are photographs of a real job with nothing written on them, because the story is being told aloud and text would compete with it. The speaker notes run to nine pages, with the opening and the three closing sentences written word for word and the middle left as prompts, because the owner is comfortable talking about his own work and stiffens when he reads. The run sheet marks the twenty-minute point and names the two sections to drop. The talk lands at 36 minutes with four minutes of questions, and the deck is later reused, unchanged, for an apprenticeship open evening.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Who is in the room, how long you have, what you want them doing afterwards, and who is speaking. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Length, number of slides and number of versions agreed before anything starts.
3. A recorded conversation. Forty-five minutes with the speaker, talking through the subject without slides. This is where the phrasing comes from, and it is why the notes sound like them.
4. The running order. The talk on one page with timings. You approve the shape before any slide is written.
5. The draft. Slide copy and speaker notes within ten working days of approval.
6. A rehearsal pass. You present it once, to me or to a colleague, and the notes are revised against what actually came out of the speaker’s mouth rather than what was written for them.

Two to three weeks from first call to final documents is typical.

What it costs

Presentation copy is not one of the published bands on the pricing page, so it is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. The price depends on the length of the talk, whether the subject needs research or only a conversation with the speaker, and whether one person or several will deliver it. A 20-minute talk from a speaker who knows the material is the simplest version.

What happens next

A talk given once is a waste of the preparation, so the common next step is turning the session into a downloadable guide. If it was recorded, the same material becomes a page that people can find later. And if the room is meant to leave holding something, the single sheet is written from the same running order so the two agree. None of it is assumed. The talk is a complete piece of work on its own, and once it has been given, the job is done.