Theme
Next, in order to help keep these concepts organized and to keep me from bouncing all over the place, I would want to pick a theme. Hopefully, your central points suggest a basic theme: in this case, my theme would be "You will feel better and grow taller if you get to sleep at a decent hour."
My theme would become the title of my presentation, and I would refer back to it a couple of times while I was speaking. I would state the three basic concepts, the absolutely must remember arguments during the introduction and the conclusion, and develop them further within the body of the presentation.
That leads me to the next step: filling out the details under each main point.
| You'll feel better | You will have more time to eat breakfast if you don't oversleep | You need sleep to grow |
| You will be more able to pay attention to your teacher and will learn better | Studies show students who eat breakfast do better in school | You are heading into the major growing years of your life |
| You'll be in a better mood at school | You won't be so hungry before lunchtime | Explanation of research showing the relationship of sleep to growth |
| You'll be less tired in the morning | You'll be able to concentrate better during class if your stomach isn't growling | Your goal is to be a pro basketball player--so you will need to be taller than four feet |
The purpose of developing your outline in this grid form instead of in a list is to help you keep a little flexibility in your presentation. Now that you have outlined your whole argument, you can look over it at a glance, from side-to-side and top-to-bottom, all on one page. With this concise view, you can easily prioritize which argument is most important to this particular audience, and you can also organize the supporting facts in order of importance. If you have put this information together with the help of word processing or spreadsheet software, you can move your arguments around with a little cut-and-paste action. If you hand-wrote them, of course you can re-write to move them around.
Building your presentation as a grid will also help you later on, if you should give a very similar presentation to a different audience. You can use the same basic arguments and structure, or augment them as appropriate, but it will be simple for you to reorganize your arguments based on each situation and the priorities of each audience. For example, each of my three children has different priorities: one would be a lot more interested in having the ability to eat breakfast. Another would be more interested in being in a better mood in school, and the third would most want to be able to grow taller. Also, for visual learners, the grid will be easier to recall (without using written notes) when you are giving the presentation. And if someone asks a question, it will be easier for you to pick up where you left off without derailing your train of thought.
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