Why fixing the slide count first ruins the deck

What makes this hard

What comes first in a presentation is not the slide count but the time and the audience. Speaking through one slide takes roughly a minute to a minute and a half. Force 10 slides into a 5-minute talk and each gets 30 seconds — at that pace no slide lands. Give the time instead, and the count falls out by arithmetic.

The other common failure: on-screen text and the speaker's script come out merged. When slides are full of sentences, the audience reads instead of listening. Unless the request separates the two, AI just cuts one essay into slide-sized pieces.

What to add to the request

1. Give time and audience as fixed values

'A 10-minute executive briefing' and 'a 30-minute peer seminar' produce completely different decks from the same content. Say derive the slide count from the time and you get a number with a basis.

2. Force one message per slide

Put three things on one slide and the audience takes away none. Require one key sentence per slide, decided first, with only what supports it on that slide. For internal reporting, also specify conclusion-first ordering — building up from background spends the decision-maker's time.

3. Separate screen text from script

Checklist for writing it yourself

1. 1Did you give time and audience — not a slide count in their place
2. 2Did you require one key message per slide
3. 3Did you require screen text and script to be separate
4. 4Did you require a source slot on slides that carry numbers
5. 5Did you keep working labels like 'claim/evidence/source' off the slides — those are the maker's notes, not the audience's screen

The Slides studio takes six kinds separately — internal reporting, pitching, lectures, research talks, debates, events — because each needs different material. Reports lead with the conclusion; research talks lead with method and limitations.