PowerPoint滥用之祸

    Prezi大获成功，自从2009年4月推出以来，已有1,000万人登陆使用过。阿瓦伊解释说，Prezi幻灯片除了简单的前后相接，还可以上下叠加，任凭演示者随意拉动，缩放自如。

    除了无法加强说服力之外，“这让人们更喜欢演示，更充分地了解内容，记得更牢。”阿瓦伊说。“人类的大脑适合空间思考。”或者像伯杰所反驳的，Prezi只不过是“眩晕版PowerPoint。”伯杰建议使用大量图片来调节气氛，或者使用更精致的数据可视化工具来羞臊笨拙的智能图表柱状图。（请参看作家本•格林曼的两个系列1 和 2对过度使用图表的模仿讽刺。）

    要点？避免使用。肖丁认为要点讲不好故事。伯杰说：“跳出来的每个要点只不过就像再鞭子抽一下。”同时，它也使人们难以区分真正的冲突和无关紧要的争论，或者找出清单上各个要点相互之间的联系。某个标注的“痛点”是否导致了下一个要点？或者或，其实它们毫无联系？大多数幻灯片并不能回答这个问题。

    我倾向于认为，具有说服力的演示就应该揭示这种区别，就是要告诉观众：“没错，我相信这件事导致了另一件事，而原因则是如此如此。”

    所以最终还要依靠一些没什么技术含量的技巧。动画片《南方公园》（South Park）和音乐剧《摩门经》（Book of Mormon）的制作人特雷•帕克和马特•斯通在纽约大学蒂希艺术学院（NYU's Tisch School of the Arts）的一次谈话中告诫编剧系的学生，千万不要在谋划联系的努力中偷工减料。他们在讨论中将白板分成三幕（开始、中间、结束），再把情节的节点草草地写在上面。《南方公园》剧集的每个部分，或者他们所说的“故事节点”就是这么草拟出来的。

    随后，帕克在这段视频里说：

    “我们来看看这些点，它们基本上也就是剧情大纲的节点。如果‘然后’这种字眼出现在了两个节点之间，那你就完了。因为它说明你的故事很没劲。每个节点之间的联系要么是‘因此’，要么是‘但是’。而不应该是：这个发生了，然后那个发生了。相反，是这个发生了，所以那个发生了。或者这个发生了，但是同时那个也发生了，因此另外一件事发生了。”

    值得一提的是，帕克没有使用幻灯片或者讲台，而是直视自己的观众。

    Arvai explains Prezi's success -- since launching in April 2009, they've logged over 10 million users -- by pointing out that Prezi slides can be arranged not simply one after the other, but above and below each other, and the presenter can swoop up and down, zoom in and pan out.

    Caveats about persuasion aside, "this allows people to enjoy it more, understand it more fully, and remember it better," says Arvai. "Our brains are wired to think spatially."

    Or, as Berger counters, Prezi is just "PowerPoint with vertigo." Berger suggests using image-heavy slides for quick comic relief, or more elegant data visualizations that put chunky SmartArt bar graphs to shame. (For a great send-up of that problem -- the overuse of graphs -- check out the author Ben Greenman's series here and here.)

    Bullet points? Avoid them. Bullets don't tell stories, says Sjodin. "Every point that pops up is like another lash with the whip," says Berger. They also make it hard to distinguish between real conflicts and mere hassles, or how items on a list relate. Does one bulleted "pain point" cause the next one, or are they completely unrelated phenomena? Most slides won't tell you.

    I'm inclined to think it's precisely the hard work of making those distinctions and telling an audience, in essence, "Yes, I believe this thing causes this other thing, and here's why," that makes a presentation compelling.

    So it all comes down to lo-tech skills. In a talk at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, South Park andBook of Mormon creators Trey Park and Matt Stone gave advice to student screenwriters on making sure one doesn't scrimp on the hard work of drawing connections. They discussed dividing a big white board into three acts (beginning - middle - end) and scribbling plot points across it. Every piece of South Park action, or what they call "story beats," is jotted down.

    Then, says Parker in this video:

    "We can take these beats, which are basically the beats of your outline, and if the words 'and then' belong between those beats, you're fucked, basically. You've got something pretty boring. What should happen between every beat that you've written down is either the word 'therefore' or 'but.' So it's not this happens and then this happens. Instead, it's this happens therefore this happens. Or this happens but this happens also, therefore something else happens."

    It should also be noted that Parker gave this advice without slides or a podium, looking directly at his audience.