How to write a presentation script (with a slide-by-slide example)

A presentation script is the full text of what you will say, laid out slide by slide, with a cue for each slide change and a start time for each section. To write one, settle the single point of the talk, outline it in timed sections, draft what you will say before you design the slides, then read it aloud with a timer and cut. Plan on 120 to 130 spoken words a minute, so a five-minute slot holds about 550 words once you leave room to breathe.

Script, notes, or both

Whether to write out every word depends on the stakes and on how well you know the material. There are three ways to bring words to the front of the room.

Even if you will present from notes, write the script first. Writing in full sentences is how you find the gap between slide four and slide five that bullet points hid, and it is the only way to know the length before you are standing up. Notes made from a finished script are short because you know what each keyword stands for. Notes made instead of a script are short because the thinking hasn’t happened yet.

How long the script should be

Speaking guides put a comfortable pace for a talk with slides at roughly 100 to 150 words a minute, a little slower than conversation, because you stop for slide changes, for laughs and for questions you can see on people’s faces. Plan at 120 to 130 and then time yourself, because the only rate that matters is yours. Write to about 90 percent of the slot. The margin absorbs a late start, a slow projector and the sentence you add on the day.

Slide count is a weak clock. Guy Kawasaki’s well-known 10/20/30 rule (ten slides, twenty minutes, no type smaller than 30 points) works out to two minutes a slide, while a talk built on photographs might change slides every fifteen seconds. Budget time per section instead, and write each section’s start time into the script.

How to write a presentation script

1. Write the point in one sentence

   Finish this line before anything else: “When I sit down, I want them to ___.” Approve a trial, understand a result, change a habit. If you can’t finish it, no amount of slide design will rescue the talk. Every section you write later has to earn its place by serving that sentence.

2. Outline in timed sections

   Break the talk into four to eight sections, usually one idea per slide or per small group of slides, and give each a time budget that adds up to 90 percent of the slot. The presentation outline template has the structure ready. The opening and the close get their own sections, even when they are only thirty seconds long.

3. Draft what you’d say, then the slides

   Write each section as if you were explaining it to one colleague across a table, in the tone of voice the room expects. Only then decide what the screen should show: the number, the picture or the three words that make the spoken point land. Build the slides first and you end up with a script that narrates bullet points.

4. Rewrite every sentence for the ear

   Listeners can’t reread, so the rules of readability tighten. Keep one idea per sentence. Use contractions. Round your numbers (“almost a third,” not “32.7 percent”). Say where you are going: “Two problems. The first is cost.” Repeat the line that matters, because repetition, one of the oldest rhetorical devices, is how a listener knows what to keep.

5. Script the opening, transitions and close word for word

   These are the moments where speakers stall, so they stay in full even if everything else becomes notes. A transition is one bridge sentence that ends the last slide and opens the next (“That’s the cost. Here’s what we get for it.”), never “Next slide, please.” For first lines, see how to start a presentation; for last lines, how to end a speech.

6. Read it aloud with a timer, then cut

   Stand up, click through the real slides and read at speaking pace. Write the actual start time next to each section. Anything you stumble over twice gets rewritten; anything that runs long gets cut, starting with the second example in a section, which is almost always weaker than the first. If you use PowerPoint, its Speaker Coach reports your pace and flags filler words and reading straight from the slide.

Presentation script example, slide by slide

Here is a complete script for a five-minute slot. A team lead is proposing to replace a one-hour Monday status meeting with written updates and a shorter meeting. It is about 460 spoken words, under the 550-word target, which leaves room for five builds, nearly twenty pauses and a slow start. At a relaxed pace it runs about four minutes and twenty seconds. The marks work like this:

Notice what the script does that slides alone can’t. The first line is a specific scene, not a greeting. Every number is said in a form you can hear (“a hundred and eighty hours”). Slide 3 is fair to the other side before the proposal arrives. Every slide change has a bridge, the close returns to the opening image, and the ask is a single yes-or-no question. The written update on slide 4 is a short version of a weekly status report.

Mark the script for delivery

A script you will hold or print is a working document, not an essay, and its layout should help you find your place with a glance. The format borrows from the two-column A/V script that video producers use, where what the audience sees sits beside what it hears. For a presentation, one column is enough if each section starts with the slide.

SLIDE [n] · [Slide title]                      [start time]
On screen: [what the audience sees, including builds]

[CLICK] [Bridge sentence from the last slide.]
[What you say about this slide, in short spoken sentences.] /
[The one line they should remember.] //

• Print it large. 14 to 16 point type, one and a half or double spacing, wide margins. You will read it at arm’s length, under bad light, while nervous.
• Never split a sentence across pages. End every page at the end of a section if you can, and number the pages in case you drop them.
• Put the cues where your eyes land. Slide number and start time at the head of each section; [CLICK] at the start of the line where the click happens.
• Use speaker notes if you present from a laptop. PowerPoint’s Presenter View shows your notes on your screen while the audience sees only the slide, and you can enlarge the notes text. Google Slides and Keynote have their own presenter views.

From full script to speaking notes

After three or four timed read-throughs you know the script by its shape. Shrink each section to the words that trigger the rest, and keep the opening, the transitions and the close in full. Here is slide 3 of the example both ways.

If the talk has to be word-perfect, for a recording or a competition, the guide on how to memorize a speech covers methods that keep you from sounding recited.

Mistakes that make scripts sound read

• Writing for the eye. Long sentences, brackets, “the former and the latter,” “as you can see in the table above.” Read your draft aloud; if you run out of breath, the sentence is too long.
• Putting the script on the slides. Your audience reads faster than you speak, so a slide full of your sentences gets read before you finish the first one, and then nobody is listening.
• Writing to the full slot. A script that fills exactly five minutes at your rehearsal pace runs long on the day, once a laugh, a question and a slow clicker get in.
• No bridges. When slides change without a sentence that connects them, the talk sounds like a list of separate announcements.
• Reading with your head down. Look down at the start of a sentence, look up to say it, and look at the room for every full pause. The // marks are there to remind you.
• Rewriting the night before. New sentences haven’t been timed or rehearsed, and they are the ones you will stumble on. Freeze the script a day out.

Writing your script in Strokes

Strokes is a desktop editor for macOS and Windows that keeps each document as a file on your machine, which suits a script that goes through many drafts. Keep the outline and the script as documents in one project folder. Page view gives you real pages with margins and page numbers, so the printout matches what you rehearsed, and you can export to PDF to print or to Word to share. When you cut a ten-minute version down to five, version history keeps the longer draft one click away.

For the rewriting pass, select a paragraph, press ⌘K and ask for shorter sentences that are easier to say aloud. You can also ask the AI Assistant beside the document whether the argument holds up from slide to slide, or which section is the weakest candidate to cut.