PowerPoint as Narrative Tool: Jennifer Egan’s ‘A Visit from the Goon Squad’

Presentations are all about sharing stories. It doesn’t matter what the content is about, or what the specific goals are. You could be pitching a business plan or leading a seminar. At the very core, they’re truly all the same. In all presentations, you share knowledge and information in a way that your audience can easily understand. In other words, you tell a story.

Since stories are in the nature of all presentations, the same should follow for your PowerPoint decks. It’s hard to think of PowerPoint as a narrative tool, especially in the corporate setting. Most of the time, we fill our slides with charts and numbers and all the important points in our presentations without much thought. But if you take the time to familiarize yourself with its functions, you’ll be surprised how PowerPoint can become a narrative tool. It can easily turn your information into a story that’s easy to follow.

As an example, let’s take a look at how a piece of fiction is told through PowerPoint slides. In Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize winning book ‘A Visit from the Goon Squad,’ there’s an entire chapter that’s written using PowerPoint. You’ll be surprised to see the PowerPoint charts and graphics we’ve discussed in the past used as a literary medium.

In “Great Rock and Roll Pauses”, you can see just how flexible the most iconic presentation software is. Observe how Jennifer Egan fashions PowerPoint as a narrative tool by viewing the full presentation here.Try to get inspiration from Egan’s work for the next time you have to make use of charts and graphs in your PowerPoint presentation.

Featured Image: fly via Flickr