Bullet Points, Not Sentences
Here's the thing. I already told you not to write your talk word for word. Now I want to show you what to write instead.
Bullet points. Not sentences.
I know that sounds like a small distinction. It's not. It's the difference between sounding like a person and sounding like a robot reading off a card, and I found that out the hard way with a room full of teenage boys who let me know about it.
Why sentences trap you
If you write out full sentences, your brain does something sneaky. It memorizes the sentence, not the idea. So when you're standing up there and you lose one word, you don't know what comes next, because you never actually learned the point. You learned the wording.
That's when people freeze. Not because they forgot what they wanted to say, but because they forgot exactly how they planned to say it.
Bullet points don't let you do that. A bullet point holds the idea and leaves the wording up to you in the moment. Which means every time you give the talk, it comes out a little different, and it always sounds like you, because it is you.
What a bullet point actually looks like
Not this:
"When I was coaching my son Clayton before his job interview, I realized that practicing an answer out loud multiple times really helps a person get comfortable with their material and deliver it more confidently."
This:
- Clayton interview story
- made him answer same question 3x
- got clean on the 3rd try
- point: practice out loud, not in your head
That's it. Four lines. When you stand up, you're not reading a paragraph, you're reading a memory jog, and your brain fills in the rest because you actually know the story. You lived it. You don't need the sentence to remember it happened.
Clayton got the job, by the way. I still bring it up. He's tired of hearing about it 😂
How to build your bullets
Here's the process I use, step by step, same as I'd walk a new guy through a machine setup:
- Write your point first. One line. What's the actual thing you want them to walk away knowing?
- List your support underneath. Two or three bullets max. A fact, a story, an example. Don't write the story out, just name it, like I did with "Clayton interview story" above. You know the story. You don't need to script it.
- Cut anything that's not point or support. If a bullet is just there to sound smart or fill space, take it out.
- Read the bullets out loud, not silently. This is where people cheat. Silent reading feels done. Out loud is where you find out you don't actually know your transitions yet.
- Do it two or three times, same bullets, different words each time. If it comes out roughly the same each pass, you know your thing. If it falls apart differently every time, you've got a gap, and better to find it now in your kitchen than up at the podium.
A caution
Don't go the other direction either, where your "bullet" is actually four sentences crammed onto one line with no line break. I've seen people do this and call it bullets. It's not. If you can't say it in about five words, it's not a bullet yet, it's a sentence wearing a disguise.
Also — and I mean this — don't build bullets you don't understand. A bullet point can't save you if you don't know why it's there. I'd rather see three points you actually get than eight points you're hoping the audience doesn't ask about.
Try it right now
Take whatever you're working on for this class, even if it's just "why I like my job" or "the thing I want to say at the family reunion." Write it as bullets. Five minutes, no more. Then stand up, actually stand up, and say it out loud twice.
Notice where you stumble. That stumble is telling you something. Either the bullet's in the wrong order, or you don't know that part as well as you thought. Fix the bullet, not by adding more words to it, but usually by taking words away.
That's the whole trick with this one. Less on the page, more in your head.
Before next time
Turn one thing you're planning to say this week, at work, at church, wherever, into four or five bullets on an index card. Don't write a script. See how it feels to talk from bones instead of a full skeleton.