This is the real first step of making a presentation. You will need to brainstorm it first, finding subtopics or subtitles that will be your presentation’s core.

These subtopics are just some points or questions (both of them have same purpose) that will guide you through the presentation’s making process. They are something that remind you what you will need to explain next. And maybe, you still don’t know how to look for as many subtopics as possible to enrich your presentation. And here is how.

1. Use what, when, why, who, when, and how

Yeah, maybe this is an ancient journalistic info-seeking technique, but this works well with presentation, especially, brainstorming.

Of course the really first step you should do is to decide your main theme. Your main theme can be as small as one word (which means that it is a wide one), or it can be bigger with few words more (more specific theme). Your main theme usually related with your expertise, your class, etc..

After deciding your main theme, you should use the old and vintage and ancient (and whatever things mean similar) journalistic 5W1H technique. It can be “what is [your theme]?” and “when it was first held?” and there can be some more “when” or “what” and other W’s and H’s, like “when it was last held?”. Do not think about these W’s and H’s perfection. Just make a lot of them. We will think about finishing and polishing them in the next few steps.

2. No lose ants in “what”

When you explain your theme and write it in a note, you may notice some definitions which are not easily understandable. This is what we can call “lose ants”. These definitions must be explained. If you do not understand this yet, here is an example: “bicycle is a kind of transportation device that uses a handlebar and two gas tire”.

Can you notice the “handlebar” and “gas tire” definitions there? Believe it or not, some people may not know what handlebar or gas tire is. This will leave some lacks inside their mind. This is what we call “lose ants”, and we must do something about this. The best action you can try is to explain what handlebar and gas tire are in a short sentence, just to fill in these lacks.

Now you will notice that there are some “what”s inside your “what”s. This makes your presentation longer. This is okay, because today, you only need to brainstorm your presentation, putting as much things as you can put.

3. Explain what happened when “when”

Honestly, I have seen much presentations told a date when they reached the “when”. Well, we are talking about brainstorming presentation here. And really, we could expand this “when” than just a date.

Rather than just “20th of December, 2014”, we can really put something else. Rather than “Bicycle was invented in 1800’s”, we can expand this into something like “Bicycle was invented in 1800’s, the same century when rubber tire was invented, but not handlebar”. Make a chained related facts like this, using the same “when”. This is both important for the quantity and quality of your presentation. Based on the example above, you should notice that, beside adding presentation’s length, chained facts above explains one reason and one shocking fact about early bicycle: bicycle invented because the existence of rubber tire, but, earlier bicycle may become difficult to control because the absence of handlebar.

Making these chained facts will guarantee longer presentation. Based on how related the chained facts are, these chained facts can also improve your presentation’s overall quality.

4. There are many “why”s you can explain

“Why” is the symbol of human curiosity. Naturally, people will ask many whys.

When you give a fact to the people, they may ask you two whys. For example, if you told them “Bicycle was invented in 1800’s”, they may ask you “Why 1800’s?” and “Why it must be invented anyway?”. People like to find the cause of something. If we analogy this “something” with “effect”, and “reason” with “cause”, we can make a theory called cause-effect theory. And believe it or not, people like to know the cause more than the effect. Why? Because people can use their own imagination to conclude their own “effect” if they already knew the “cause”.

Well, your Q&A section are not long enough to answer all of whys from the people. So that’s why I suggest you to make as many why as you can, and then answer them by yourself and put the answers directly on your presentation content.

5. Tell people about “who” biographically

Most people just tell “someone invented this” when we are talking about “who”.

We really can tell something more than just a name. We can tell how he invented something, his failures, how he got the idea, etc.. But, we can tell something about him biographically, like we are making a short biography of him (or her, in case if she’s a woman).

We can tell when and where did he born, his life’s struggle, how “lucky” he was, and something else. I suggest to tell anything about him that is related to your theme. And believe it or not, it is not just about the steps on how he invented something (your theme, for example); it can be some moments in his life which motivated him to leave his failure behind and try other method, it can be his inspirational things like “hey, he was a homeless and poor man, and he invented something, why don’t you?”, it can be anything. Just make sure that this small biography does not take much time.

6. Use why in “how”; they’re close relatives

A set of facts usually attract many “why”s. Unfortunately, “how” is usually a set of facts, so you will need to do a lot of work here.

When you answer “how”s, you will notice that some steps need to be explained like “why do we need to do this?”. Yeah, it’s up to you to answer these new “why”s or not. We are talking about brainstorming and adding your presentation’s quantity as much as possible here.

For example, your answer for a how question like “how do aerodynamic helmet becomes aerodynamic?” is “it’s curved design makes wind goes around the helmet smoothly”. Then, you may realize that people may ask “why letting the wind goes around the helmet? How about letting the wind going inside the helmet and then letting it out?”. Then, you may want to answer this “why”, whether it will or will not asked by the people later. You just want to make your presentation as clear as possible.

Yeah, that’s 6 steps to brainstorm your presentation. Remember to use the old journalistic 5W 1H. Happy brainstorming!